George Coppin

Rich’s Glory or his Triumphant Entry into Covent-Garden by William Hogarth, 1732. British Museum, London.

The word ‘cartoon’ was originallyused to describe the outline sketches made by artists in the preparation of large pictorial works. In the mid-nineteenth century, the term was adopted by London Punch in relation to their comic black and white illustrations. Today it is used to describe not only satirical drawings, but animated films, such as those created by Loony Tunes and Disney.

Whereas cartoons generally evoke a humorous scene or event, caricatures are generally satirical portraits of individuals, usually famous people. Caricatures may gently mock their subjects or be out and out insulting. By exaggerating a single feature, be it face, figure or dress, at the same time retaining the identity of the subject, the artist is able to capture their personality, often with only a few deft stokes of the pen.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the term ‘black and white artist’ was used to describe those who used a pen rather than a paintbrush, with many of these artists associated more often than not with newspapers rather than the Royal Academy.

While politics and politicians are the most widely mocked, actors and members of the theatrical profession have not escaped the attention of the graphic satirist.

In Britain, William Hogarth (1697-1764) pioneered the satirical cartoon, lampooning the political and social conventions of the day. Hogarth made a few theatrical drawings, such as Rich’s Glory or his Triumphant Entry into Covent-Garden (c.1732), a satire on John Rich and company arriving at the newly constucted Covent Garden theatre. John Gay, the playwright, is being carried on a porter’s back, while Rich, dressed as harlequin, is driving an open carriage.

During the Regency period, James Gillray (c.1756-1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) continued the satirical tradition.

Gillray’s 1801 depiction of the celebrated opera singer Elizabeth Billington gently mocks that lady’s large frame and stagey gestures. As Mandane in Thomas Arne’s opera Artaxerxes, she thumps her bosom and throws out her left hand, most probably while singing the virtuosic aria “The Soldier, Tir’d of War’s Alarms”.

In 1811, Rowlandson produced a close-up view of one of the ‘pigeon holes’ which flanked the upper gallery at Covent Garden, illustrating the cramped conditions experienced by the audience.

A Bravura Air: Mundane, caricature of Elizabeth Billington by James Gillray, 1801

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Pidgeon hole: A Convent [sic] Garden contrivance to coop up the gods by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811

British Museum, London

George Cruikshank (1792-1878) emerged as one of the leading satirists of the early nineteenth century. He took on a number of theatrical subjects, notably Edmund Kean. His 1814 print The Theatrical Atlas shows the great actor-manager, dressed as Richard III, supporting Drury Lane Theatre on his back; a satirical comment on the financial support received by the theatre’s owner Mr Whitbread through Kean’s performances of Shakespeare.

Seventy years later Horace Morehen (1841-1905), signing himself “H.M.”, depicted Henry Irving about to take on the perils of management. Irving is shown standing outside the Lyceum Theatre, a banner across the building’s facade announcing: “To be opened shortly with an entirely new management”. Morehen was a nephew of Alfred Bryan (see below) and had studied under his uncle. He enjoyed a modest career as a theatrical caricaturist.

The Theatrical Atlas [Edmund Kean] by George Cruikshank, 7 May 1814

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Henry Irving by “H.M.”[Henry Morehen], 1883, prior to the opening of London’s Lyceum Theatre

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

During the nineteenth century black and white artist came into their own. One artist who deserves to be better known is Frederick Waddy (1848-1901). His work featured in Once a Week and other illustrated magazines from the 1860s. In 1873 a large selection of his drawings was published in Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day. Of the fifty men depicted many are from the theatrical profession including Dion Boucicault, J.L. Toole, Henry Irving and Lionel Brough. His portrait of Toole, originally published in Once a Week, shows the actor dressed as Paul Pry, captioned with that character’s favourite catchphrase, “I hope I don’t intrude”.

A contemporary of Waddy, Alfred Bryan (1852-1899) also specialised in theatrical caricatures. Born Charles Grineau in London, he was a regular contributor to Entr’Acte magazine and its almanack. In 1881 he supplied fifty portraits of actors and actresses to Charles H. Ross’s Stage Whispers and Shouts Without: a book for players, playgoers, and the public generally. A rare copy of this book, disassembled, is included in the Coppin Collection at the State Library Victoria. Bryan’s 1876 portrait of J.L. Toole shows the actor in his street clothes holding a bag bearing his name. The three examples from Stage Whispers and Shouts Without are of the playwright/novelists Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade and the actor Charles Coghlan.

“I hope I don’t intrude” [J.L. Toole] by Frederick Waddy, Once a Week, 9 March 1872

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Mr J.L. Toole by Alfred Bryan, Entr’Acte Almanack, 1876

Yesterday’s Papers

A page from Charles H. Ross’s Stage Whispers and Shouts Without, published by “Judy” Offices, Shoe Lane, London, 1881, with fifty illustrations of actors and actresses by Alfred Bryan

Coppin collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Another artist specialising in theatrical portrait was Lewis John Binns (1871-1931). This British-born artist is largely forgotten today, however, the New York Public Library holds over 100 original watercolours in their collection depicting English actors and actresses. One such drawing is of the actress Fanny Brough in her role of Dorcas Gentle in the 1892 sporting drama The Prodigal Daughter. Though Binns’ artistic skill was widely admired, after 1900 he was involved in a series of thefts and other misdemeanours for which he served a number of prison sentences, and he fell out of favour.

The late 1880s saw the emergence of the theatrical souvenir. One of the first was prepared for George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre in London to commemorate, in April 1887, the 100th performance of the burlesque Monte Cristo Jr. This was followed in late 1889 by one for Ruy Blas. It comprised a small folio containing ten chromolithograph colour prints of the principals in the burlesque, including Nellie Farren, Fred Leslie, Sylvia Grey and Fred Storey. The prints are not signed but are very probably by the noted designer Percy Anderson (1851-1928) who created the costumes for both productions.

Miss Fanny Brough: Prodigal Daughter by L.J. Binns, c.1892

New York Public Library, New York

Chromolithograph of Fred Storey in the burlesque Ruy Blas at the Gaiety Theatre, London, 1889. The drawing is not signed, but is most probably by Percy Anderson who designed the costumes for the production.

Elisabeth Kumm collection

The most influential of the satirical magazines of the nineteenth century was undoubtedly Punch. First published in London in 1841, it employed some of the greatest black and white artists of the day, including John Leech, John Tenniel, George du Maurier, Linley Sambourne, Bernard Partridge, Phil May and Edward Tennyson Reed.

One of the finest satirical illustrators on Punch was Linley Sambourne (1844-1910). Associated with the newspaper from the 1860s, he reached his peak as a cartoonist in the 1880s, when, for example, he took aim at Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement. His pictures are filled with detail and he amassed a huge photographic collection that helped him to attain this level of accuracy, especially in relation to his caricatures of famous people, whose expressions he perfectly captures.

In 1898, Punch artist Edward Tennyson Reed (1860-1933) published a curious volume titled Mr Punch’s Animal Land. Comprising fifty-two likenesses of leading figures, the portraits are presented as though the subjects were newly discovered species, bearing a classification and brief explanation. The only actor included was Henry Irving, given the genus ‘Stagynite’ (presumably the ‘nite’ referred to Irving’s 1895 knighthood) with the following description:

This funny creature gets up things very nicely. When people go to see it it makes the queerest noises and stamps on the floor and drags itself about. I expect he says it all night but you can’t tell.¹

Linley Sambourne, Punch’s Fancy Portrait—No. 37 “O.W.”, Punch, 25 June 1881

Published in Great Drawings and Illustrations from Punch, p. 117

Edward Tennyson Reed, ‘The Stagynite’, 1898

From Mr Punch’s Animal Land, Bradbury, Agnew & Co., London, 1898

As the nineteenth century wore on, illustrated magazines were in profusion, from The Illustrated London News and The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News to Once a Week and Vanity Fair.

When Vanity Fair launched in January 1869, it caused a stir by introducing the first chromolithographic caricatures. These coloured drawings of ‘prominent men of the day’ were printed on stiff card and ideal for framing. Sitters no longer sported large heads or exaggerated features, but instead exuded a casual and easy going air. Each week new portraits were released and for the first couple of years politicians and peers predominated, but soon novelists, artists, architects and actors joined their number.

Vanity Fair’s principal artist was the Italian-born Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889), who signed himself “Ape”, producing over 2,000 portraits between 1869 and 1889. The theatrical profession is represented by Henry Irving (1874), Tommaso Salvini (1875), W.S. Gilbert (1881), Dion Boucicault (1882), and Oscar Wilde (1884), this last named pictured as the consummate dandy with curled locks and a button hole.

Pellegrini’s successor was Leslie Ward (1851-1922), who worked under the pseudonym “Spy”. He continued the tradition of producing beautiful colour prints that were more akin to actual portraits than comic caricatures. Over the course of four decades he drew over 1,300 ‘characteristic portraits’ of leading men of the day. His 1889 portrait of Arthur Cecil does not betray the actor’s profession. With his brief case, cane and top hat in hand he could easily be mistaken for a stockbroker or a solicitor.

Oscar [Oscar Wilde] by Carlo Pellegrini (“Ape”), published in Vanity Fair, 24 May 1884

National Portrait Gallery, London

Mr Arthur Cecil by Leslie Ward (“Spy”), published in Vanity Fair, 28 December 1889

National Portrait Gallery, London

Cartoons and caricatures featured in many Australian newspapers and magazines. Melbourne Punch, founded in 1855, was closely modelled on the London publication. Though politicians were constantly lampooned, the theatre was also the butt of many a satirical cartoon. Noteworthy artists who contributed to the early success of Melbourne Punch, included Nicholas Chevalier, Samuel Calvert and S.T. Gill.

As actor-manager, property developer and politician, George Coppin was popular with cartoonists. During the mid-1850s his Olympic Theatre and Cremorne Gardens amusement park were depicted numerous times within Melbourne Punch. Generally the cartoons are unsigned, but the one of Coppin standing outside the rotunda at Cremorne Gardens is probably by Samuel Calvert (1828-1913), and the one depicting the audience at one of Anna Bishop’s recitals has been identified as by Nicholas Chevalier (1828-1902).

An Elegy. Written in Coppin’s Olympic by an unnamed artist, Melbourne Punch, 2 August 1855. This caricature of G.V. Brooke and Fanny Cathcart in Othello accompanied a satirical poem.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Punch’s Illustrations to the Poets,attributed to Samuel Calvert, Melbourne Punch, 26 February 1857, showing Coppin standing outside the rotunda at his Cremorne Gardens amusement park in Richmond

Trove

Cartoon by Nicholas Chevalier showing a segment of the dress circle at the Olympic Theatre with its occupants dissolved in tears on hearing Anna Bishop singing ‘Home Sweet Home’, published in Melbourne Punch, 22 May 1856

Trove

In 1863, Melbourne Punch enjoyed much merriment with a theatrical incident that was to become known as the Melbourne Shakespeare War. When George Coppin engaged the renowned English tragedians Charles and Ellen Kean to play a season of Shakespeare at the Haymarket Theatre in Melbourne, he was not prepared for the response elicited by Barry Sullivan, a young Irish tragedian, performing at the nearby Theatre Royal.

In a move to undermine his rivals, Sullivan sought to match the Keans’ repertoire by presenting Richard III on the same night and staging his production of The Merchant of Venice one night before them. The situation was further inflamed with the newspapers taking sides. The Argus sided with the Keans, while the Age rooted for Sullivan. Meanwhile, Melbourne Punch took full advantage of the situation by offering a humorous commentary. A cartoon published on 15 October 1863 shows Kean and Sullivan playing a card game to determine who is the better actor, with Mr Punch as referee. Two weeks later, on 29 October, in response to Sullivan pasting posters all over town, Punch suggested that Kean should do the same with copies of the Argus reviews.

The Rival “Gamesters”: Kean & Sullivan playing for fame in the southern hemisphere by an uncredited artist, possibly Montague Scott, Melbourne Punch, 15 October 1863

Trove

One Good Turn Deserves Another by “M.S.” [Montague Scott?], Melbourne Punch, 29 October 1863

Trove

Best known for his vivid watercolour sketches of life on the Victorian gold fields, S.T. Gill (1818-1880) also painted scenes of urban Melbourne. His pictures are often comic in tone and include portraits of character types rather than identifiable individuals, such as his c.1880 depiction of the dress circle boxes at Melbourne’s Queen’s Theatre in 1853. However, he did tackle actual people, notably with his ‘Heads of the People’ series. The first series, published in 1849, comprised five portraits, including an early caricature of George Coppin.

Dress circle boxes, Queen’s Theatre, Melbourne, 1853, painted by S.T. Gill, c.1880

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Acting Purveyor General [George Coppin] by S.T. Gill, Heads of the People, 1849

State Library of South Australia, Adelaide

In Australia, visiting musician and opera singer, Charles Lascelles (1835-1883) was also an accomplished caricaturist. Born Charles Gray in England, he was a cousin of the novelist Wilkie Collins. Twelve surviving portraits by him in the National Library of Australia depict members of W.S. Lyster’s opera company. Drawn around 1870, they include Fannie Simonsen (as Maritana), Mariano Neri, Enrico Dondi (as Mephistopheles) and conductor Martin Simonsen.

Though clearly labelled ‘Lucy Escott as Maritana’, this caricature by Charles Lascelles has been identified by Harold Love to be of Fannie Simonsen, 1870

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Caricature of conductor Martin Simonsen by Charles Lascelles, 1870

National Library of Australia, Canberra

In the 1870s, Melbourne-born artist Tom Durkin (1853-1902) contributed 36 caricatures of prominent men (and one woman) to the Weekly Times. The series titled ‘Masks and Faces’ (an illusion to Charles Reade’s play of the same name) was published between 1873 and 1875. Durkin also drew cartoons for other newspapers and periodicals including Bull-Ant, Queensland Punch and Australian Graphic. From 1889, he was a regular contributor to the Sydney Bulletin, and from 1893 he was responsible for the Melbourne page.

No. 8—A Theatrical Manager [George Coppin] by Tom Durkin, Weekly Times, 3 January 1874

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

No. 25—Opera [W.S. Lyster] by Tom Durkin, Weekly Times, 12 September 1874

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

From its establishment in 1880 the Bulletin took the art of caricature and cartooning to a new level of sophistication. Though they principally dealt with topical political issues, leading figures of the theatre were also represented, such as the portrait of George Coppin by Phil May (1864-1903) which graced the cover of the paper in December 1888. The caption “I hope I don’t intrude” references Paul Pry’s catchphrase. Like Toole in England, Paul Pry was one of Coppin’s favourite characters. British-born May spent three years in Australia, 1886 to 1888, during which time he produced over 800 drawings for the Bulletin. On his return to England he worked for Punch and also produced numerous annuals and anthologies of his work. He was one of the most popular illustrators of his day. In 1895 he received the honour of being included in Vanity Fair’s anthology of ‘men of the day’ when “Ape” drew his likeness.

A Victorian Musical Critic: Alfred Plumpton by Phil May, Bulletin, 8 June 1888

Trove

George Coppin, comedian and legislator: “I Hope I don’t Intrude” by Phil May, Bulletin, 29 December 1888

Trove

Henry Irving by Phil May, c.1889

National Portrait Gallery, London

Phil May by Leslie Ward (“Spy”), published in Vanity Fair, 21 February 1895

National Library of Australia, Canberra

To be continued

Principal Sources

John Adcock, Alfred Bryan (1852-1899), Yesterday’s Papers, john-adcock.blogspot.com/2011/10/alfred-bryan-1852-1899

Stanley Applebaum, Great Drawings and Illustrations from Punch, 1841-1901, Dover Publications, New York, 1981

British theatrical caricatures from Hogarth to Cruikshank in the Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard Theatre Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006

Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day: the drawings by Frederick Waddy, Tinsley Brothers, London, 1873

William Feaver, Masters of Caricature: from Hogarth and Gillroy to Scarfe and Levine, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1981

Kate Flaherty & Edel Lamb, ‘The 1863 Melbourne Shakespeare War: Barry Sullivan, Charles and Ellen Kean, and the play of cultural usurpation on the Australian stage’, Australian Studies, vol. 4, 2012

Marguerite Mahood, ‘Melbourne Punch and its Early Artists’, La Trobe Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 4, October 1969

Edward Tennyson Reed, Mr Punch’s Animal Land, Bradbury, Agnew & Co., London, 1898

R. Smith, ‘Cartoonists of Australia’, Australian Left Review, Feb-March 1968

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Bob Ferris, Mimi Colligan, Judy Leech

It seems he did have a restless mind, always looking for a better situation in
the theatre and not oblivious to the possibility of better chances outside it.¹

I
have long beencaptivated by the history of circus in Australia. Out of that captivation has grown a deep appreciation of the range and quality of entertainers and entertainments that kept Australians amused in the pre-electronic era. While some may beg to differ, George Selth Coppin (1819–1906) has been widely credited as ‘fathering the Australian theatre’.² In this article, I draw attention to some of Coppin’s lesser-known contributions to the annals of Australian leisure and recreation.

Certainly, Coppin made enduring contributions to the development of Australian theatre but serious theatrical activity had already been underway for a decade when Mr and Mrs Coppin disembarked from the Templar in Sydney on 9 March 1843.³ Undoubtedly, Coppin was ‘one of the busiest and most versatile figures in the history of the Australian theatre’.⁴ And undoubtedly, not so widely understood or appreciated were his genuine contributions to the annals of Australian entertainment, at the margins of, or even beyond, conventional ‘theatre’. Some of these contributions were successful, others not. Some have been recognised in passing by Coppin’s biographers, others not.

George Coppin as Demosthenes Dodge in The Artful Dodger

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Sydney, 1843–44

The Coppins’ arrival and early presence in the Australian colonies coincided with an era of energetic development and profound change. Decision makers in London had already recognised that New South Wales had become ‘too well settled and too civilised to be a good penal colony’. ⁵ From 1840, the penal transportation system was progressively wound back. From emancipated convicts, their progeny and an ever-increasing number of free immigrants, there emerged a free labour force with purchasing power and a desire for meaningful leisure.⁶ In 1842, the year before the Coppins’ arrival and only 54 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, Sydney had been proclaimed a city.

While Sydney’s expanding working class was eager to leave behind the vulgar pastimes of the convicts it also spurned the well-ordered pastimes of the colony’s soi-disant upper orders, its civil and military elites. The ‘common sort’ disdained the amateur theatricals, promenades, balls and concerts of the elites, instead preferring the popular stage and the ‘light music, gaiety, ribald and sentimental songs, recitations and comedy’ offered in hotel saloons.⁷

At this time, throughout the industrialising British Isles, there were calls to promote ‘rational’ entertainments to amuse the ‘lower orders’, humanise their minds and serve the unrelenting imperatives of factory and office.⁸ New genres of mass entertainment, such as circus, pantomime and hippodrama, had evolved to compensate an increasingly urbanised workforce for its loss of rural customs and pastimes.⁹ Yet, these elaborate forms of entertainment would not be introduced into the Australian colonies in any strength until the gold rush era of the 1850s and then only in a truncated form.

Despite initial reservations, Mr and Mrs Coppin took Sydney ‘by storm’ during their season at Joseph Wyatt’s Royal Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street.¹⁰ Freshly arrived, Coppin observed Sydney with an enlightened sense of both its limitations and its potential. Everywhere, traces of its original penal purpose were still apparent while notions of ‘rational’ entertainments were yet to gain traction.

By the 19th century, many cities of Europe and North America boasted their own botanical gardens, often developed and maintained at public expense. At the simplest level, ‘botanical gardens’ were ‘pleasure’ gardens for which an enterprising individual charged admission and earned additional revenue from games and the sale of flowers and refreshments. At least some of Australia’s first settlers, whether bonded or free, were familiar with the gardens that dotted London. Now perched on Australia’s coastline, they were as removed from the birds, reptiles and marsupials of Australia’s interior as they were from the sights and sounds of animals from Asia and Africa to be seen in the pleasure gardens of London.

Although Sydney had been served by its Botanic Gardens since 1816, the exhibition of wild and exotic animals was only enabled by speculative sea captains who purchased them en route to sell to petty showmen waiting on the arrival wharf. Coppin recognised Sydney’s need for a zoological garden where these animals could be properly exhibited and for which care could be provided. On 4 May 1843, only eight weeks after arriving, Coppin was sufficiently stirred to write to Governor Gipps to request his assistance in establishing a zoological garden on the Government Domain. A zoological garden, Coppin maintained, would relieve ‘the great dearth of innocent amusements’ for ‘parties who object to visiting theatres’ and amuse the native-born citizens deprived of exhibitions of ‘wild animals and the surprising docility they may be brought to’. Altruism aside, Coppin’s entrepreneurial instincts were apparent. Claiming, truthfully or not, to possess ‘long experience in most of the Gardens in England’, Coppin sought an exclusive right to exhibit wild animals together with ‘fireworks, music and any entertainments not interfering with the legitimate drama’. Gipps declined to assist. The Governor had neither the power to grant land nor contribute financial support, adding that, even if Coppin attracted private support, the venture would inevitably ‘end in disappointment and loss’.¹¹

Not to be discouraged, Coppin refined his objectives and petitioned the City Council for the ‘grant of a lease of about two or three acres of land’ opposite the ‘Catholic chapel’ (the approximate site of today’s St Mary’s Cathedral):

… in the Government Domain between the two southern gates, for the purpose of constructing a zoological garden which, beside comprising an extensive exhibition of wild animals, should contain an extensive concert saloon, and be supplied with other kinds of amusement for the entertainment of the citizens …

Coppin estimated that the cost of establishing the garden—including the erection of a pavilion 80 feet in length and the purchase and importation of wild animals from Calcutta and the Cape of Good Hope—would amount to £1500. His petition was ‘well received’ but Council did not control the Domain. Coppin’s petition was simply noted and put aside.¹² Nothing more was heard on the matter but others obviously took note of Coppin’s visionary proposal. Only four years later, William Beaumont and James Waller, established their Botanical & Zoological Gardens in the grounds of Beaumont’s Sir Joseph Banks Hotel at Botany Bay. It quickly became Sydney’s pre-eminent pleasure resort. Like Coppin, Beaumont, who had arrived in Sydney in 1840, was clearly aware of calls for ‘rational recreation’. Beaumont and Waller sought to appeal to ‘parties in search of innocent recreation’ by organising ‘a collection of as many specimens of the natural history of the country as … procurable’.¹³

Beaumont & Waller’s Botanical & Zoological Gardens at the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany Bay. From Illustrated Sydney News, 30 June 1855. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

Unable to launch one entrepreneurial initiative, Coppin sought another. Financially enriched by his theatrical success and barely three months after his correspondence with Gipps and the City Council, in August 1843 Coppin purchased the lease of the Clown Hotel, opposite the Royal Victoria.¹⁴ Coppin opened its large, 40-foot long saloon each Monday, Thursday and Saturday evenings, probably for the benefit of ‘parties who object to visiting theatres’. The evening’s entertainment was called a ‘Free and Easy’, a forerunner of the music hall.¹⁵

… Mr Falchon’s singing is well known and is heard to greater advantage in a room than on the stage. Coppin amuses the company with some of his drolleries. Phillips’ Nigger [sic] songs are capital. Fillimore is excellent on the piano. Jones is also a pleasing singer. In short, the crowded saloon, on every evening it is open, speaks sufficiently for the excellence of this combination of attraction.¹⁶

Coppin did not charge admission to the saloon on these evenings and soon encountered financial difficulties. In September 1844, Coppin advertised his lease of the Clown Hotel for sale, indicating his willingness to accept one-half of its original cost 12 months earlier.¹⁷ In January 1845, he and his wife departed for Hobart Town under engagement to star in Mrs Clarke’s Royal Victoria Theatre.¹⁸ In August 1846, the Coppins arrived in Adelaide where George converted the billiard room of the Temple Tavern into the New Queen’s Theatre with seating for 700 people.¹⁹ By June 1847, George was the licensee of the Auction Mart Tavern in Adelaide’s Hindley Street.²⁰ In October 1849, he sponsored a racing cup, ‘Coppin’s Cup’, for the Adelaide Races.²¹ At Port Adelaide in 1850, he built the Port Theatre, part of a complex called the White Horse Cellars that included a tavern, meeting hall, hotel and stables.²² At the ‘nascent’ township of Scarborough, Coppin built the ‘commodious’ Semaphore Hotel, enhanced with ‘marine gardens’ and a ‘thermopolium’ (the 19th-century version of a fast-food shop).²³ Like the zoological gardens he had proposed for Sydney in 1843 and Melbourne’s Cremorne Gardens which he would acquire in 1856, the Semaphore was outside the craft of conventional theatre, a pleasure resort that lay on the margin of the metropolitan area.²⁴

During his stay in South Australia, Coppin maintained his theatrical profile while diversifying his business interests. However, the gold rushes in the sister colonies of New South Wales and Victoria encouraged a large exodus of gold-seekers from South Australia and, by late 1851, Coppin was caught up in the resulting South Australian recession:

His assets were frozen. [His] shares in copper mines … were valueless. So were his [interests] in the Port Lincoln Mining Company and the Phoenix Mining Company … and the Adelaide Mining Company... Their £5 shares were not worth 5 shillings … He advertised the lease of his new Semaphore Hotel. No one wanted it. The White Horse Hotel upon which he had spent £3,500 was unsaleable. He still owned Hart, Hagen & Co. £830 for the land on which it was built … His transactions were so closely interlocked that removal of one brought down the lot. There were so many of them: ten and a half acres of land at Port Adelaide, a block of land at Port Lincoln … [a] half share in the Black Prince, a fine seaworthy boat … [and] accounts with a dozen different firms …

Insolvent, Coppin’s best option was to sail to Port Phillip and join the gold rush. At Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine and other diggings, 60,000 miners were active. However, after a few days on the diggings at Forest Creek, he realised he had no prospects as a gold digger. It was pointless to return to Port Phillip as Melbourne had been depopulated and public services reduced to a standstill.²⁶ He retired instead to Geelong where, at Deering’s playhouse, he entertained ‘successful diggers from Ballarat … coming down with gold burning a hole in their pockets’.²⁷ By 1853, he was able to return to Adelaide, fully repay his creditors and return to England to seek new attractions. He engaged the renowned Irish Shakespearian actor G.V. Brooke for an Australian tour. At a cost of £5000, he commissioned the manufacture of a prefabricated structure comprised of an iron frame dressed with sheets of corrugated iron. This was to be dismantled and shipped, in pieces, to Melbourne where it would be assembled and fitted out as a theatre.²⁸

Every week, government escorts delivered upwards of 40,000 ounces of pure gold found in the bush to banks in Melbourne or Geelong to be shipped to London. During Coppin’s absence, the colony exported ‘about one hundred tons of solid gold’. People were busy and money was plentiful. Shops were crowded with imported goods. Public houses and hotels were thronged. Public demand for entertainment was insatiable.²⁹

Olympic Theatre, Melbourne, 1855

Coppin’s Olympic Theatre, the ‘Iron Pot’, at the corner of Lonsdale and Stephen (now Exhibition) Streets, c.1858. Photograph by Walter Bentley Woodbury. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, RPS 3093-6-2018.

When Coppin returned to Melbourne in December 1854, it was no longer the shanty town he had first visited nine years earlier. The widespread prosperity generated by the gold rush had inspired the erection of several venues for the entertainment of the public, some grand in conception others mediocre but all calculated to relieve the city of its provincialism.³⁰ Despite a population of well less than one hundred thousand, enthusiastic audiences packed Melbourne’s theatres each evening. Nevertheless, theatre patronage was no guarantee of theatre viability.³¹ The exuberance of the gold rush had reached its zenith and the competition for survival between Melbourne’s various places of amusement had intensified.

The city’s first theatre, J. T. Smith’s Queen’s Theatre at the corner of Queen and Little Bourke Streets, had long been tabooed ‘on account of the improprieties tolerated there’.³² Coppin now laid eyes on two completely new theatrical edifices, the so-called Astley’s Amphitheatre (named after the legendary London establishment), at the corner of Spring and Little Bourke Streets, and, although still under construction, the 3,300 seat Theatre Royal in Bourke Street. The pleasure resort that James Ellis opened at Richmond in 1852, Cremorne Gardens, had undergone further development during Coppin’s absence. To these and other outlets for entertainment, Coppin would soon introduce a further element of competition in an already highly-competitive field: a prefabricated theatre of galvanised iron.³³

Rowe’s North American Circus, corner of Lonsdale and Stephen (later Exhibition) Streets, 1854. From TheArm-Chair(Melbourne), 25 February 1854. Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

For over two years from June 1852, an American circus man, Joseph Andrew Rowe had presented his North American Circus in a pavilion of timber and canvas that he erected on vacant, centrally-located ground at the corner of Lonsdale and Stephen (later Exhibition) Streets.³⁴ Drawing on his Californian experience, 1849–51, Rowe remained anchored at this metropolitan location rather than tolerate the hardships and lawlessness of the goldfields. Rowe knew that the diggers would eventually return to squander their newfound wealth. He had little competition apart from the Queen’s Theatre, the Salle de Valentino in Bourke Street and several concert rooms.³⁵ Handsomely enriched during his stay and wary of the growing number of competing entertainments, Rowe closed his circus for the last time in October 1854.³⁶ He returned to San Francisco reputedly laden with £40,000 in ‘cash and numerous chests of treasure’.³⁷ The vacated lot presented Coppin with a desirable location upon which to erect his imported, pre-fabricated theatre of iron. He leased the lot from its owner, John McCrae, for a term of 21 years at an annual rental of £1855.³⁸ In April 1855, the first foundation stone was laid on the vacant lot by Coppin’s esteemed associate, the recently arrived G.V. Brooke.³⁹

The nameless theatre, it may be right to mention, was constructed in England, under the superintendence of Mr Coppin, shipped by him to this colony, and is to be erected, complete and ready for use, within thirty days from this date. It will cover an area of 156 feet by 91 feet, at the intersections of Lonsdale and Stephen streets, and will seat 1500 people … The elevation is simple and elegant in design, the central portion of the facade will be appropriately surmounted by the figures of Shakespeare, Thespis, Thalia, and Melpomene, and the wings will break the uniformity and improve the general aspect of the edifice.⁴⁰

Following the Manchester manufacturer’s instructions, contractors quickly assembled the theatre for the debut of ‘The Great Magician, Ventriloquist and Improvisatore, Mr Jacobs, The Wizard of the North’ in June 1855.⁴¹ Although the ‘nameless’ edifice was given the official name of ‘Olympic Theatre’, it was informally labelled the ‘Iron Pot’.⁴² The Olympic’s official opening took place on the evening of 30 July after Coppin and Brooke returned from a Sydney engagement.⁴³

With the competition of the Theatre Royal muffled, Coppin’s Olympic had only the ‘degraded’ Queen’s Theatre and Astley’s Amphitheatre with which to compete. From October 1855, Astley’s would fall under Coppin’s control and, ironically, the Olympic proved to be the ‘stepping stone’ by which Coppin obtained control of the Theatre Royal.

Royal [Astley’s] Amphitheatre, Melbourne, 1855–57

Astley’s Amphitheatre, at the corner of Spring and Little Bourke Streets, c.1858. Photograph by Walter Bentley Woodbury. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, RPS.3093:62-2018 and RPS.3093:63-2018.

On a corner opposite the Salle de Valentino at the top of Bourke Street, an American builder, Thomas Mooney, built an amphitheatre capable of accommodating both equestrian and dramatic entertainments. On completion, in September 1854, Mooney leased the edifice to the foot-juggling entrepreneur, G.B.W. Lewis.⁴⁴ Grandiloquently naming the establishment Astley’s Amphitheatre, Lewis dispatched his agent, Henry Birch to London to engage a large company of circus performers from the original Astley’s.⁴⁵ Three ‘drafts’ of performers arrived from London over the summer of 1854–55.⁴⁶ An early visitor was:

both pleased and surprised at the spacious elegance of the building and the completeness of the entire arrangements, which are much more London-like than colonial … The athletic and gymnastic exercises were first rate, and such as we have never seen excelled in Ducrow’s or Astley’s—circuses that we often visited in our boyish years.⁴⁷

However, the purpose-built, fixed-location amphitheatre, typical of London or Paris, proved uneconomic in a colonial setting. The population of London—the home of the original Astley’s Amphitheatre—was some 2,400,000 in 1851.⁴⁸ The population of Paris—the home of the equally renowned Cirque Olympique—was some 1,000,000 in 1851.⁴⁹ Such cities could generate audiences of the size and enthusiasm necessary to sustain the patronage of large permanent circus venues. In contrast, Melbourne’s population, swollen to around 76,560 people in 1854, declined to 52,502 by 1857 as many settled the interior.⁵⁰

By June 1855, Lewis had over-extended himself. He was insolvent, indebted to Birch for £3,000 and beset by legal problems and poor weather. In addition, he was about to be confronted by the ‘superior attractions’ of John Black’s new Theatre Royal, said to rival London’s Drury Lane and Covent Gardens.⁵¹ On 16 July, the Theatre Royal opened. Four days later, Astley’s closed.⁵²

In October 1855, Coppin took over the lease of Astley’s Amphitheatre, remodelled and redecorated it, and installed gas lighting. Re-named the Royal Amphitheatre, the venue re-opened in February 1856 with the Backus Minstrels, Coppin convinced that ‘a certain portion of the community don’t [sic] want dramatic amusements’.⁵³ For several evenings in March 1856, the actress, vocalist and danseuse, Lola Montez was its sole attraction. The house was ‘crowded to excess’, many anticipating that Coppin would perform his burlesque of Lola’s famous—by some accounts, ‘notorious’—Spider Dance that was so popular with diggers on the goldfields.⁵⁴ But Coppin refrained, having earlier been forewarned by Lola that:

… if he paid the goldfields a visit [to perform his burlesque], she would exert her influence with the miners and have him stripped in order to tar and feather him.⁵⁵

An observer remarked that Lola ‘never looked more charming’ and ‘her dancing was as unobjectionable as it was elegant’.⁵⁶ In the midst of applause on the evening of her benefit, Montez stepped forward in an apparent gesture of reconciliation to pay a ‘warm tribute to the ability and conduct of Mr Coppin as a theatrical manager’⁵⁷

Lola Montez [Maria Gilbert], dancer and courtesan, 1821–1861. Photo by C.D. Fredricks, New York.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

With two competing houses of entertainment under his control, the Royal Amphitheatre and the Olympic, Coppin was careful, in public pronouncements, to concoct a distinction between himself as ‘manager’ of the former (of which he was actually lessee and director) and himself as ‘manager’ of the latter (of which he was the owner, at least of the pre-fabricated theatre that sat atop the leased ground). A citizen, writing under the nom-de-plume of ‘Censor’, expressed his disgust at Coppin’s deceptive assumption of this double identity:

[In] … making a distinction between the two managerships … he is endeavouring to throw dust, in the eyes of the public; anxious that he should not, no doubt, compromise his position as manager of the Olympic with the ‘respectable classes’ by any statements he might make as manager of the Amphitheatre … This ‘sailing under false colours’ is so transparent that very few people will be deceived by it. The manager [of the Amphitheatre] states … that he will not defend the morale of Jack Sheppard, and then further on covertly argues that this play is not nearly so vicious as Macbeth, Richard III, Henry IV and others which are not only relished but praised by the most respectable portions of society … Passing over the insult offered to the memory of the Bard of Avon by comparing his plays with such vile productions, one is struck with the way in which it is attempted to hoodwink the real objection to Jack Sheppard … [The] real objection to Jack Sheppard and kindred performances is that in them vice is made into a kind of heroism... Few things have had a greater effect on the growth of juvenile crime. But to do the Manager of the Amphitheatre justice, he does not disguise the reasons why he introduces these plays upon his boards … He is told by the press that it is immoral—that it breeds thieves... He replies by saying that he will not defend its morality; but that it really pays him too well for him to think of withdrawing it … Really, could there be anything more insulting to the Victorian public than this! A statement also is made to the effect that the manager of the Olympic has lost ‘a fortune’ in the ‘insane attempt’ to revive the plays of Shakespeare, and that the manager of the Amphitheatre is not fool enough to follow his example … The public should … refuse their patronage to those who outrage public morals and defend it by insulting public feeling.⁵⁸

Whether or not Censor’s protests gained any traction, lack of patronage forced the Royal Amphitheatre’s closure only eight weeks after its re-opening.⁵⁹ Announcing the last night of the season, Coppin stepped forward to address the audience:

… the attempt to establish a popular place of amusement at a low price of admission has proved a decided failure, inflicting a considerable loss upon the treasury, which would have been very serious but for the great attraction of Madame Lola Montes [sic], and the successful production of Jack Sheppard … This result proves my previous statement ‘that a good company cannot be supported by a low price of admission, with a limited population’. It has been stated that 3s., 2s., and 1s. is not low, but in my opinion a manager of a theatre is placed in the same position as any other trader who has to depend upon the colonial market for his supplies … My farewell to a low price of admission …⁶⁰

Theatre Royal, Melbourne, 1856

The ‘Old’ Theatre Royal, Bourke Street, photographed in 1861, destroyed by fire in 1872

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Coppin had originally commissioned his prefabricated Olympic Theatre with the intention of confronting Melbourne’s only existing playhouse, the Queen’s Theatre, with meaningful competition. Instead, he found himself competing with a new theatre built during his absence and superior to his own, the Theatre Royal, which opened two weeks before the Olympic.⁶¹ Fortunately for Coppin, the Theatre Royal proved to be an unprofitable burden on its already deeply indebted owner, John Black, and after incurring construction costs inflated by the goldrush induced shortages of labour and materials. After spending a reputed £45,000 to build the Royal, Black was forced to sequester his estate only three months after its opening. Receivers kept the Royal open but only to satisfy Black’s creditors.⁶³ In May 1856, Coppin purchased the lease of the Theatre Royal for £21,000.⁶⁴

Cremorne Gardens, Melbourne, 1856

The founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles, established the exclusive ‘Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London’ on Regent’s Park in 1828. In 1847, ‘The Zoo’, as the gardens and menagerie became known, was opened to public admission.⁶⁵ By that time, London was dotted with numerous pleasure gardens.

In October 1852, James Ellis sailed from Plymouth for Melbourne taking with him scenery, properties and the ‘necessary adjuncts’ for a portable theatre to erect on the diggings.⁶⁶ The failed manager of a London pleasure resort, Cremorne Gardens, Ellis was lured to Australia by the rush for gold.⁶⁷

Many years later, it was reported that Ellis, the American circus man John Sullivan Noble and the equestrian John Jones ‘made lots of money’ out of their Olympic Circus ‘at the top of Bourke Street’.⁶⁸ In May 1853, after obtaining a publican's license, Ellis re-opened the Bourke Street establishment as the Salle de Valentino, ‘beautifully decorated and embellished’. Concerts, music and singing replaced equestrian feats.⁶⁹

The Salle [de] Valentino, Bourke Street, ‘after the appearance of Madame Carandini’, by S.T. Gill, 1854

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Yet, the Salle de Valentino remained an old, tent-like circus pavilion that soon degenerated into a ‘low dance hall’ typically:

... thronged with diggers carrying a little fortune in their belts and charmed by female dancers sedulously intent upon securing some portion of their easily-acquired wealth.⁷⁰

Out of the Salle de Valentino, Ellis cleared upwards of £6,000 over the following 21 months. In November 1853, he took out a ten-year lease on ten acres of natural bush land at Richmond on the banks of the Yarra River, about three kilometres from the city.⁷¹ There he began to shape a pleasure resort modelled on the London pleasure gardens he had once managed. He planted trees and flowers, installed paths, created a maze, drained a swamp to form a lake, installed pavilions, grottoes and ornamental bridges.⁷² To the sound of music, the spectacle of fireworks and devoid of anything that could offend the fair sex, this antipodean version of London’s Cremorne Gardens was opened on the evening of Saturday, 10 December 1853.⁷³

Since the 1840s, speculative sea captains had kept colonial exhibitors supplied with wild and exotic animals they purchased at ports-of-call in Africa and Asia.⁷⁴ In January 1854, the 1200-ton ‘screw steamship’ Madras from London, via Madras, Calcutta and Singapore, dropped anchor in Port Phillip.⁷⁵ Captain Parfitt offloaded a ‘fine large elephant for sale in these colonies’ as well as two camels. At ‘considerable expense’, Ellis promptly purchased both elephant and camels to add to his attractions at Cremorne.⁷⁶ When Ellis closed Cremorne over the winter of 1854, he moved the elephant and camels to his Salle de Valentino where he opened his Cirque Nationale for a brief season under the management of William H. Foley, an American circus man.⁷⁷ As well as the equestrian company, Foley announced that ‘the Siamese [sic] elephant’ and the ‘two trained camels’ would ‘make their first bow before a Melbourne audience’.⁷⁸ Although a common sight in larger circuses by the early 20th century, this was the first occasion in which these animals were presented in a circus ring in Australia.

… [The] clever elephant now located in Cremorne Gardens went through his part to the satisfaction of a densely-crowded audience. We have no doubt that his elephantine majesty will continue to reign the star of the evening for a long time to come. The sagacious animal must be seen by all the sightseers, in Melbourne....⁷⁹

The elephant and camels were returned to Cremorne for the Gardens’ re-opening in October, joining other ‘numberless’ attractions, including vocal and instrumental concerts, a splendid orchestra, illuminated grottoes and playing fountains. The elephant could be seen ‘taking water’ at six o’clock each evening. Patrons could also admire Mons LaLanne’s ‘celebrated French troupe of pantomimists’ and Monsieur Joe-il-Diavolo’s 400-foot descent in his ‘Chariot of the Sun’ over the lake amidst fireworks.⁸⁰

Pleasure seekers could easily reach the Gardens from the city, whether by walking, riding or omnibus.⁸¹ They could also reach the Gardens by a little steamer, the Gondola, that plied the Yarra River.⁸² Between March 1853 and the end of December 1854, Ellis deposited about £22,000 into his bank account, the combined receipts from the Salle de Valentino and Cremorne Gardens.⁸³

Despite Ellis’s ‘consummate tact and taste’, Melbourne’s ‘owl-looking’ evangelicals managed to have the sale of spirituous or fermented drinks prohibited on Sundays, the very day the Gardens were most patronised.⁸⁴ Over the 21 months since Cremorne’s opening, Ellis’s Sunday takings plunged from as much as £335 to as little as £14.⁸⁵ Ellis’s fortunes were not helped by ‘the depressed state of the times and the monetary condition of the colony’. In March 1855, these ‘unfortunate circumstances’ compelled Ellis to close Cremorne Gardens.⁸⁶ Describing himself as a ‘licensed victualler’, Ellis filed his insolvency schedule a few weeks later.⁸⁷

In March 1855, following the closure of Cremorne Gardens and James Ellis’s insolvency, ‘the celebrated performing elephant of Cremorne Gardens notoriety’ was put to auction at Tattersall’s stables.⁸⁸ Exhibited in country towns and on the goldfields, the ‘sagacious’ elephant was not seen at Cremorne again. Nor were the two ‘trained’ camels. Another elephant would not be seen at Cremorne but several more camels would make their appearance some years later as discussed below.

In June 1856, Coppin purchased the fee-simple of Cremorne Gardens from Ellis for £10,000 intending to make improvements worthy of ‘the best gardens of the kind … in European cities.’⁸⁹ Coppin moved his family within the Gardens.⁹⁰ Coppin had executed an ‘entire transformation’ of the Gardens before formalising his partnership with G.V. Brooke ahead of the Gardens’ re-opening in November 1856:

Its floral decorations have been largely increased, and now that the roses are in full bloom, the flower-beds are one mass of prodigal blossom. Carved and turned seats have been formed wherever opportunities presented themselves, and the various walks will be lighted with jets of gas laid on from the works upon the premises. The Rotunda has been renovated and enlarged; two spacious bars have been erected the one at the entrance of the grounds, and the other in the rear of the old bar; a theatre, larger we believe than the Olympic, has been constructed for the performance of vaudevilles and concerts; and an extensive rifle gallery and bowling-saloon have been built in another portion of the gardens. There is also a maze, formed after the model of its English prototypes, and an interesting collection of birds and animals, including an eagle, an emu, wallaby, kangaroo, some monkeys and opossums, peacocks, and a number of Australian birds, some of them exhibiting a tropical gorgeousness of plumage. But the great attraction of the gardens is the pictorial model of Mount Vesuvius and the city of Naples, upon which Messrs Pitt, Arregoni, Henning[s], and Wilson have employed their pencils with great advantage. All the architectural details of the picture have been designed so as to exhibit the most picturesque variety-castles, churches, and palatial edifices having been grouped together in such a manner as would conduce best to the general effect. Altogether the picture is a very effective one, whether seen by daylight or by the ruddy glare of the eruption.⁹¹

The ‘theatre larger than the Olympic’ was an open-air theatre. Named The Pantheon, it was intended to present ‘novelties both amusing and instructive’ during the summer months and could offer greater comfort than the city theatres.⁹² And, indeed, the Pantheon saw the delivery of some sterling performances such as: the English Opera’s grand selections from the opera Maritana in November 1856 and Mr and Mrs Craven in their musical burlettas.⁹³ More frequently, the Pantheon was adapted to less exceptional objectives when necessary such as the gratuitous ‘good old English dinner’ served to 2,000 people on Boxing Day 1857.⁹⁴ In fact, the Pantheon was too far from the city to command the patronage of regular theatre-goers; too susceptible to weather conditions to ensure consistent patronage; and, freely entered, too cheap to be regarded a serious theatre.⁹⁵

The Salle De Valentino, Bourke Street, photographed just before it was demolished in 1856

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Despite these improvements and the constant infusion of attractive innovations, Cremorne Gardens proved to be ‘a bottomless pit into which money … [Coppin] made elsewhere [was] sunk’.⁹⁶ Cremorne Gardens was never restored to viability. During the 30-month life of their partnership, outlined below, Coppin and Brooke relied on their interest in the Theatre Royal to fund their less profitable ventures, Cremorne Gardens in particular.⁹⁷ Matters were not helped by G.V Brooke’s inability to manage the Royal upon which the survival of Cremorne critically depended.⁹⁸ Eight months after purchasing Cremorne Gardens, Coppin claimed to have already spent £15,000 on improvements.⁹⁹

Partnership, 1856–59

Gustavus Vaughan Brooke (1818–1866), actor and Coppin’s business partner, 1856–58

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

By September 1856, George Selth Coppin and Gustavus Vaughan Brooke had formally merged their theatrical interests into a ‘full’ partnership. At the time, it was perceived to be a ‘fortunate combination of histrionic ability and worldly sagacity, professional effort and managerial tact’.¹⁰⁰ Brooke wrote enthusiastically to his mother to say:

Mr Coppin and I have become lessees of the Theatre Royal which we have had open for four months successfully. We have jointly purchased Cremorne Gardens, about two miles from Melbourne … We now have the Theatre Royal, the Olympic, Astley’s Amphitheatre, Cremorne Gardens and four very large hotels, all in full swing … It is a great speculation but with every certainty of success.¹⁰¹

To the partnership, Coppin brought his standing as one of the most popular actors in the colonies as well as the four properties under his control, outlined above: the Olympic ‘Iron Pot’ Theatre, which he had built and opened in June 1855; the Royal Amphitheatre, formerly Astley’s, the lease of which he had taken over in October 1855; the Theatre Royal, the lease of which he had taken over in May 1856; and Cremorne Gardens, which he had purchased, outright, in June 1856. Brooke, whose services had been under Coppin’s ‘entire control’ since coming to Australia, brought to the partnership his worldwide standing as ‘the great tragedian’ and, presumably, some financial capital.¹⁰² Despite their optimism, however, a constant injection of novel attractions would be required to keep afloat the partnership’s near-monopoly of Melbourne’s principal attractions.¹⁰³

Of the four venues, all but the Olympic had a chequered record of success. In February 1857, nine months after purchasing the lease of the Theatre Royal, Coppin bemoaned the £4,000 lost from their presentation of grand opera there.

Although I may regret the loss of the money, I assure you I regret still more that an attempt to produce opera has proved a failure, for I look upon the cultivation of high-class music as being absolutely necessary to improve our social condition. Many have been the reasons given for this failure - bad weather, not understanding Italian, disliking a portion of the English opera company, the high prices of admission to the boxes, &c &c; but in my opinion the real cause is this: we are all in business [and] opera appeals for support to the higher classes who live out of town, and dine late; and although they may occasionally make a great exertion to visit the theatre, they will not inconvenience themselves to do so through an operatic season.¹⁰⁴

During the life of the Coppin-Brooke partnership, from September 1856 until February 1859, the composition of its theatrical holdings underwent some radical alterations. In March 1857, the lease of the Royal Amphitheatre was transferred to John Black, the builder of the Theatre Royal.¹⁰⁵ As early as April 1856, Coppin had come to the conclusion that the Olympic—the beloved ‘Iron Pot’—had fulfilled its purpose.¹⁰⁶ In May 1857, unable to find a buyer, Coppin and Brooke converted the ‘Iron Pot’ into ‘an elegant and well frequented Salle de Danse’ named the Argyle Rooms.¹⁰⁷

Cremorne Gardens, 1856–59

In 1933, George Wirth, one of the original Wirth circus brothers, founders of Australia’s pre-eminent circus of the 20th century, wrote that ‘a novelty, if it is to become a sensation, must be something entirely new and not merely a new way of doing [old] things’.¹⁰⁸ Whether consciously or intuitively, Coppin embraced this fundamental principle of entrepreneurial showmanship. He possessed an uncanny ability to sense and reconcile not only the imperatives of risk and reward but the demands of the public and his creditors. Ever since he attempted to launch a zoological garden in Sydney in 1843, Coppin had pursued one innovation after another: introducing the notion of the ‘free and easy’; building theatres and hotels; importing a theatre of prefabricated iron; producing grand operas ‘worthy of any theatre in the world’; and developing marine and pleasure gardens, to name a few.

Of all Coppin’s ventures, Cremorne Gardens would prove to be his most challenging. The resort demanded constant attention to its natural beauty and the addition of attractive novelties to appeal, inexpensively, to the broad mass of the general public. But clever approaches to pricing, alone, would not ensure Cremorne’s viability as ‘One who was sold’ made clear in his letter to the Argus:

Sir, You will, perhaps, allow me a corner in your paper to expose what I and many others consider a ‘perfect sell’. Last night, I paid my 2s.6d. and was admitted to the gardens at Cremorne; but, to my surprise, there was literally nothing to be seen without extra payment. The Circus, Menagerie, &c, which we are accustomed on ordinary gala nights to see, were each charged one shilling. The only thing to be indulged in without extra charge was dancing, until the ‘grand’ display of fireworks, including the farce of storming Delhi, came off, the whole of which occupied less than six minutes. I understand there were more than 12,000 persons admitted on Monday; on Tuesday there were not more than one-tenth of that number, and last night the gardens were thinly attended - facts which, I think, speak for themselves. Refreshments, too, were much above the price they ought to be. I had a cup of tea and three small dry sandwiches, for which I paid two shillings - half that sum would have been ample. The whole of the proprietors of shows, booths, &c, signed a petition, praying that Mr Coppin would reduce the charge of admission to one shilling; but his answer was, ‘The gardens are mine, and I will charge what I please.’ Apologising for the liberty I have taken in asking you to insert this, I remain yours obediently,
‘One Who Was Sold’.
St Kilda, December 30.¹⁰⁹

Although opened seven days a week, the prevailing Sabbatarian ethos only allowed the Gardens to open on Sundays ‘after church hours’ while liquor could not be served at all.¹¹⁰

Tellingly, the program for each Christmas/New Year season listed attractions clearly intended for the masses but not the ‘higher classes’. For the season of 1856/57, these included ‘The American Picco’ who played a common tin whistle ‘with remarkable skill’; Lewis’s Equestrian Company; the ropewalker Pablo Fanque on his corde volante [slack rope]; the Italian Brothers on the trapeze; and the ropewalkers Mons Lalanne and his wife Madame Dalle Casse.¹¹¹ For the season of 1858/59, attractions included Professor Prescott’s monster display of fireworks and riding lessons for ladies and gentlemen.¹¹² For the season of 1860/61, they included the pantomime of Jack the Giant Killer, a fancy dress ball, a wheel of fortune, a Chinese feast of lanterns, illuminated pictures on the lake, dancing, and fireworks.¹¹³ For the final Christmas seasons of Cremorne Gardens, entire circus troupes were engaged, Burton’s National Circus in 1861 and Jones’ British American Circus in 1862.¹¹⁴

Towards the end of 1858, the hitherto seemingly close bond of friendship between Brooke and Coppin came undone.¹¹⁵ On 28 February 1859, the partnership was dissolved. Of the four properties—some with adjoining hotels—that they jointly controlled at the beginning of their partnership in 1856, three properties remained to be divided between them. Brooke selected the Theatre Royal, leaving Coppin with the Cremorne Gardens and the Olympic.¹¹⁶ Belatedly, Coppin realised that he would have done better by taking the Royal for himself and leaving Brooke with Cremorne and the Olympic. During the winter of 1859, despite being elected to the Legislative Council, Coppin was obliged to return to acting to make ends meet and was loudly criticised for doing so.¹¹⁷ During 1859, a new railway station was opened to serve Cremorne but it failed to dramatically improve patronage.¹¹⁸ In December 1859, Coppin closed the Olympic Theatre for good but managed to offer employment for most of its company in the Pantheon, the ‘very elegant little theatre’ within Cremorne Gardens.¹¹⁹ Nevertheless, the Gardens continued to drain his resources. In March 1860, he attempted to dispose both the Olympic Theatre and Cremorne Gardens, whether by sale or lease.¹²⁰ Failing to attract interest in either property, he converted the Olympic into a Turkish bath house that was opened in July 1860.¹²¹

In the sub-sections to follow, I have outlined some of the more striking novelties that Coppin introduced to Cremorne Gardens and their background: Australia’s first manned balloon flight, the Australasian of 1858; the presentation of camels in 1859–60 that would take their place with the expedition of Burke & Wills; and the startling aerial flights of the American trapezian, Bartine, during Cremorne’s final season of 1862–63.

The Australasian, 1858

Illustrated Australian News, 20 January 1866, p. 9. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

In June 1857, leaving Brooke and their manager, Richard Younge, in charge of their joint interests, Coppin made a hurried trip to England in search of fresh talent.¹²² In London, he approached several ‘stars’ only to find that most were ‘shining to such advantage … that they declined to move in any other orbit’. Nevertheless, Coppin was able to engage the celebrated magician, ‘Professor’ Anderson, The Wizard of the North, fifty other less-celebrated ‘notabilities’ and two experienced ‘aeronauts’, Charles Henry Brown and ‘Captain’ William Dean, together with two balloons.¹²³ One of the balloons, the 60-foot high, 31,000 cubic foot Australasian, was crafted for Coppin by England’s foremost balloonist, Henry Coxwell. The other balloon was a spare.¹²⁴

Since Anderson could not commence his Australian tour until June 1858, the most outstanding attraction that accompanied Coppin from London were the two aeronauts and their balloons.¹²⁵ So that the aeronauts could make their first ascent from Cremorne on Boxing Day 1857, Coppin and his party hastened their return by way of Egypt from where they would cross overland to Suez to ship for Melbourne. However, a five-week delay at Suez meant that it was 29 November before they could depart by the Simla. The homeward voyage was further delayed as the 2500-ton Simla had to deliver troops to India ‘to help quell the mutiny’. The Simla finally docked at Hobson’s Bay on 8 January 1858.¹²⁶ Several more weeks passed before the Australasian could be made ready for the first manned, successful balloon ascent in Australia.¹²⁷

A medallion struck to commemorate the launch of Coppin’s balloon from Cremorne Gardens,
February 1858

Museums Victoria, Melbourne

On the afternoon of Monday, 1 February 1858, the Australasian was partially inflated with coal gas at the Melbourne Gas Company at Batman’s Swamp. It was then transported by horse and cart to Cremorne where the inflation was completed from the gasometer that illuminated the Gardens at night also and served Coppin’s residence.¹²⁸ After several false starts, the Australasian lifted from a platform with its sole passenger, ‘Captain’ Dean.¹²⁹

… The roads leading to Cremorne were thronged with vehicles, and the paths with foot-passengers from 3 until 5 o’clock, and when the latter hour arrived the environs of the gardens were thronged with curious spectators.... An adequate supply of ballast having been taken in and all the preparations completed, the signal was given to let go; and the huge machine slowly arose amidst the cheers of the assembled multitude inside and outside the gardens - cheers which were repeated and re-echoed by the spectators in more distant localities. As the balloon arose, it cleared the Pantheon very dexterously and sailed but a few feet over the gates at the northern enclosure of the gardens. The aeronaut [Dean] hastily flung out a bag of sand en masse, and the balloon commenced a rapid but perfectly easy ascension, its sole passenger waving his cap in response to the cheers which rose from the crowd below... [In] twenty minutes, she had become a mere speck, a homoeopathic globule in the far distance, serenely and steadily sailing onwards… About half-past 6 the balloon appeared to have commenced its descent, and speculations became very rife as to the part of the country in which Mr Dean would once more touch his mother earth.¹³⁰

This inaugural flight of the Australasian lasted about 25 minutes and covered about seven miles until it came to earth in the vicinity of Heidelberg. Accustomed to ballooning over the green countryside of England, Dean was struck by the ‘dirty buff colour’ of Melbourne’s dry, summer landscape.¹³¹ At the Theatre Royal later that evening, after the fall of the curtain, thunderous cheers greeted Coppin’s announcement that the aeronaut and his ‘machine’ had both safely landed.¹³²

Although the flight of Coppin’s Australasian was the first successful, manned, lighter-than-air flight to take place in Australia, it was not the first attempt. In Launceston in 1845, ‘Professor’ Rea, a popular magician and ventriloquist, made several attempts to ascend in his ‘machine’, none of which were successful.¹³³ As Coppin was treading the boards in Launceston at that time, he probably witnessed one or more of Rea’s attempts and learned something from them. Branded a ‘humbug’, Rea fled to Port Phillip to escape his creditors.¹³⁴ On Sydney’s Domain in 1856, a Frenchman, Pierre Maigre, attempted a balloon ascent before a large crowd.¹³⁵ Maigre’s spectators paid as much as 5s for the pleasure of witnessing what was to be the first manned balloon ascent in the colonies. Insurmountable technical complications prevented the balloon from being launched. Maigre, set upon by hundreds of angry spectators, convinced they had been duped, fled the scene for his own safety.¹³⁶

Despite the apparent sincerity of Rea and Maigre, each man obviously lacked access to the practical and technical expertise that balloonists in Europe and America had accumulated since the Montgolfiers’ paper-lined linen balloon, filled with hot air, had risen above Paris in 1783.¹³⁷ Balloonists had constantly refined their craft to captivate spectators at fairs and pleasure resorts. Hot air was replaced by hydrogen until it was found that coal gas was not only cheaper but safer and more widely available.¹³⁸ Balloons of paper-lined linen were replaced by ballons of silk fabric coated with rubber.¹³⁹ By the 1820s, a new generation of professional balloonists had emerged who hired out their services and balloons to anyone with an occasion to celebrate.¹⁴⁰ Combining aeronautics with showmanship, the balloonist, Charles Green, became a favourite at London’s Vauxhall Gardens.¹⁴¹ Until Coppin’s initiative, these developments hardly touched the Australian colonies although they were widely reported in the colonial press.

There were several other early ballooning attempts in the colonies but all apparently unmanned. In Launceston in January 1849, the canvas roof of Radford’s Amphitheatre was drawn back to enable the launch of a large ‘Montgolfier’ [hot air] balloon from the arena. The balloon kept on its course southwards two hours but how far it ultimately travelled and whether in the direction of Campbelltown or Hobart Town, nobody could establish.¹⁴² The following January, from the same venue, a ‘grand ascent’ of probably the same Montgolfier [hot air] balloon was announced to take place before the performance.¹⁴³

At Botany Bay in May 1850, at William Beaumont and James Waller’s Botanical & Zoological Gardens, a balloon was launched aloft from which several ‘living aeronauts’—probably only dolls or puppets—were to be released and descend by parachute. To counter a rumour that their balloon was ‘nothing more than an ordinary fire balloon’ (lifted by the heated air from a cauldron slung beneath), Beaumont and Waller hastened to assure the Sydney public that theirs was an ‘air balloon’. Filled with heated air prior to its launch, it carried a ‘car’ (wicker basket) that would carry its ‘living aeronauts’.¹⁴⁴

If a manned balloon ascent was ever to be made in Australia, there was much to be learned from these previous failures. Coppin could not afford to spoil a balloon ascent at Cremorne by amateurish tinkering. An ascent would have to employ the most advanced technology and rely on the skill of experienced aeronauts. Understandably, in London, Coppin had consulted the pre-eminent balloonist of the era, Henry Coxwell of Tottenham, and had engaged the experienced aeronauts Dean and Brown on Coxwell’s recommendation.¹⁴⁵

Unfortunately, Coppin had overlooked a lesson learned from the exhibition of the Siamese elephant at Geelong some years earlier for, although the surrounding precincts were thronged with curious spectators:

… they assembled in thronging numbers everywhere but in the grounds themselves. In fact, the public seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that Mr Coppin had imported balloons and aeronauts … with no other object than that of providing the assembled thousands with a spectacle... Pecuniarily speaking, the balloon ascent must have been a failure, while, as a matter of fact in science, it was a great success …¹⁴⁶

As outstanding was Coppin’s achievement in initiating the first manned balloon ascents in the colonies, he seems to have treated the milestone with indifference. There was a personal tragedy, the death of his daughter Harriet a few weeks after Dean’s first ascent from Cremorne Gardens. Other matters claimed more of his attention. In April 1858, he was elected a Councillor of the Municipality of Richmond. In June, he announced his retirement from the stage while still ‘in the prime of life’ to devote his ‘unexpended energies to his adopted country’. In October, he was narrowly elected to a seat in the Colony’s upper house, its Legislative Council.¹⁴⁷

Camels, 1859–60

The departure of the Burke & Wills expedition from Melbourne, 20 August 1860

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Cremorne had been neglected for over 15 months when Coppin purchased the property on June 1856. He restored the Gardens, made improvements and engaged artists in time for its re-opening in November 1856.¹⁴⁸ The Gardens, now lit with gas, featured a pyrotechnic display of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; a dancing rotunda; a new theatre, the Pantheon; restaurant, bar and oyster saloons; a shooting gallery, bowling saloon and maze.¹⁴⁹ Patrons could also see a circus staffed by Mr Lewis and his troupe of equestrians; Professor Lennox’s admirable feats of magic and legerdemain; Madame Dalle Casse’s ascent and descent over the lake on her rope, 300 feet long and 60 feet high; her husband Felix LaLanne’s ‘grotesque evolutions upon stilts’ and the Italian Brothers on the trapeze.¹⁵⁰ Despite these attractions, the Gardens contained no more than an ‘incipient’ menagerie and an aviary.¹⁵¹ Some 4,000 people attended the Gardens on the evening of Wednesday, 3 December when a complimentary benefit was given to Coppin ‘the enterprising owner of the Gardens’.¹⁵²

Two years later, Cremorne held more birds and beasts than ever. To the menagerie, an ourang-outang, several lions and half-a-dozen dromedaries had been added.¹⁵³ Each evening, Signor Fernandez, ‘The Lion King’, gave his ‘daring performance and zoological exhibition’ the highlight of which was to place his head within a lion’s jaws.¹⁵⁴ Presumably, Coppin had numerous opportunities to purchase exotic animals landed by speculative sea captains. As far as the record speaks however, Cremorne’s menagerie was never as extensive as the ‘zoological garden’ that Beaumont and Waller assembled on the shores of Sydney’s Botany Bay from 1848.¹⁵⁵

Coppin was partial to camels. Indeed, there was much talk about the need to import camels for exploration parties as horses were excruciatingly slow.¹⁵⁶ Coppin had long believed in the use of camels to explore the outback:

If that idea had been followed upon when I originated it in South Australia, it would have been the means of saving many valuable lives. If I had my way, I would pass a law that no exploring party should go without camels. The self-denial and endurance of the camel in crossing the sand barren desert are well-known.¹⁵⁷

In November 1859, Coppin touted the presentation in Cremorne’s menagerie of six camels – dromedaries - delivered from Aden by the mail steamer, Malta:

These interesting animals, intended to explore the interior of this country, will only remain on view for a limited number of days previous to their departure.¹⁵⁸

After their display at Cremorne, the six camels were removed to the Olympic Theatre to appear in Azael, The Prodigal: An Old Offender; or, Jack Sheppard No. 2, to illustrate the arrival and departure of a caravan.¹⁵⁹ The camels did not return to Cremorne. What happened to them?

In Melbourne in 1857, an Exploration Committee had been established to promote the exploration of Australia’s unknown interior.¹⁶⁰ As plans to traverse the continent from south to north took shape, camels were decided upon as the most feasible means of moving an exploring party through the interior.¹⁶¹ In December 1858, the Victorian Government sent George Landells to Calcutta [Kolkata] to procure camels for the expedition.¹⁶² Landells purchased 24 camels from markets in Peshawar and Afghanistan, then walked them 1,000 kilometres to Karachi where they were loaded aboard the Chinsurah for the three-month voyage to Melbourne.¹⁶³ The expedition still short of camels, the Victorian Government purchased for £300 the six that Coppin had exhibited at Cremorne Gardens and the Olympic Theatre.¹⁶⁴ In August 1860, the Victorian Exploring Expedition set off from Melbourne to considerable fanfare, its fate to eventually enter the pages of Australian history as Burke & Wills. Of the four explorers who reached the Gulf of Carpenteria, only John King saw Melbourne again.¹⁶⁵

Coppin’s contribution of six camels might have been his only engagement with the legendary expedition but its tragic outcome provided entrepreneurs with abundant material for commemorative literary, theatrical and artistic projects. When Coppin funded the production of a diorama of the expedition, containing three-dimensional miniature scenes, he approached the Exploration Committee to secure the services of John King for £1,000 as narrator for 12 months. The proposal was damned for its ‘wretched taste’, Coppin damned as a ‘trumpery showman and charlatan’ and King, ill and traumatised, nobly declined to turn himself into a public exhibit for financial reward.¹⁶⁶

By this time, Melbourne had emerged into opulence. From gold, agriculture, and the rise of industry and commerce, its population had reached 140,000, surpassing even Sydney.¹⁶⁷ In December 1860, Coppin and Brooke resolved their differences and publicly reconciled.

The Royal was filled to overflowing. When the two men clasped each other’s hands and then stood arm-in-arm, the audience rose in unison, wildly cheering … Actors such as Brooke and Coppin were by no means merely players. They belonged to the people, who shared with them, their trials and triumphs.¹⁶⁸

But, if the renewal of their friendship was meant to renew their partnership, nothing was forthcoming. Brooke returned to London in 1861 expecting to recover his former theatrical fame. Instead, he found that production and acting styles had moved ahead and he had not. He was often drunk on stage. Deciding to try his luck in Australia again, he sailed from Plymouth by the London in January 1866. A few days later, the vessel sank in the Bay of Biscay. Brooke was drowned.¹⁶⁹

In 1862, Coppin built the Haymarket Theatre in Bourke Street but its cost of construction exceeded expectations. Despite spending over £41,000 improving the grounds and buildings of Cremorne Gardens since 1856, Coppin had failed to restore the resort to viability.¹⁷⁰ Facing insolvency, he closed Cremorne until the Christmas-New Year season of 1862–63.¹⁷¹ The brief season would be the swan song of Cremorne Gardens.

Bartine, 1862–63

Bartine, trapeze artist, c.1838–? Photo by Archibald McDonald, Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Upwards of 3,000 people visited Cremorne Gardens on the opening day, Boxing Day, Friday, 26 December 1862. The Melbourne Railway Company ran trains each half-hour from Prince’s Bridge and additional ‘special’ trains ran in the afternoon. The purchase of a single ticket admitted the holder to almost every attraction including Jones’ British-American Circus; the performance of a troupe of Maori War Chiefs, 21 in number; a gallery of cosmoramic views and stereoscopic pictures; a small collection of birds and beasts, including lions, a tiger, leopard, panther and ‘other denizens of the desert’; dancing on the rotunda; and a display of fireworks. For unknown reasons, an additional sixpence was charged to see an Indian snake charmer. But the outstanding attraction was the ‘first appearance in the Australian colonies’ of 24-year-old Henry Mahoney, better known as Bartine, a solo performer on an open-air trapeze.¹⁷²

In his seminal work, A Seat at the Circus, the late British circus historian, Antony Hippisley Coxe, distinguished three eras in the historical development of the modern circus over the 200 years since Philip Astley laid its foundations in London in 1768. Each era, he argued, emphasized a particular aspect of circus but left its fundamental character unchanged. The unrelenting pursuit of innovation was common to each era.

Experimentation was the watchword of progress … [The] industrial revolution created conditions which led to innovations in the performance arts and … trapeze would be one of these.¹⁷³

In the first era, in the 90 years following Astley, the horse and equestrian feats prevailed; in the second era, the 60 years following Blondin’s tightrope traversal of Niagara and Jules Leotard’s flying trapeze performances in Paris, in 1859, greater attention was focused on the human performers—the acrobats, gymnasts, rope-dancers and jugglers—previously confined to supportive roles on circus programs; the third era, following World War I, saw the rise of animal acts and their trainers.¹⁷⁴

In the few years following Leotard’s novel displays on his single trapeze in the cafes of Paris and London, others built on his innovations, refined them and took them to other parts of the world. Several gymnasts and gymnastic troupes soon arrived in the Australian colonies to present the latest examples of aerial performance. Over the summer of 1862–63, Bartine, thrilled Cremorne’s audiences with solo, open-air performances, such as The Leap for Life and Zampillaerosation.

The scene of his exhibition [of The Leap for Life] was that space immediately in front of the Pantheon Theatre. A narrow platform was there erected, about twelve or fourteen feet high, and 100 feet long. Three sets of ropes were suspended from posts of about thirty feet high, and these hung over the platform at equal distances, with bars attaching them together. The performer then, with the nearest bar, swung himself from a platform projecting over the theatre, and by the impulse given, he travelled to within six or eight feet of the next bar, on which he threw himself, catching hold of the handle, and in like manner he propelled himself to the next bar, from which he swung to a platform at the other end. He then repeated the same feat back again, and in his course threw several somersaults. His performance was received with well-merited applause, but owing to the wind, which at times blew rather strong, the rope did not hang true, and twice he sustained a slight fall, but with no injury. He calculated his movements with great precision, as he well required, considering the dangerous nature of the performance he was engaged in.¹⁷⁵

Trapeze gear set up within Cremorne Gardens, 1861. Photo by Cox and Luckin, Richmond.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Despite the appeal of Bartine and the numerous other attractions, the end for Cremorne Gardens was clearly approaching. On 7 February, the gates were closed for the last time.¹⁷⁶ Less than two years earlier, on the shores of Botany Bay, William Beaumont’s Botanical & Zoological Gardens had hosted its last Grand Fete. The 600 ‘elegantly dressed’ visitors was well short of the thousands who had attended its fetes in the early 1850s. By the end of 1861, Beaumont had closed his resort for the last time.¹⁷⁷ A perceptive observer of the closure of Cremorne Gardens remarked:

Even as a historical fact in colonial chronicles, the decline and fall of Cremorne are not unimportant; but as an indication of a certain condition of our social system, they are especially significant. They constitute one among many instances of the rapidity with which the phases of our colonial existence succeed each other. They seem to suggest that we have acquired, by some means, or in consequence of certain conditions, the power of compressing time into a smaller limit, or at least of bringing within a more defined compass a succession of events. Perhaps we are only obeying a rule prevailing in all new countries, of living fast, and of doing more in a given time than they are in the habit of doing in the older countries of the world. In this way, perhaps, a couple of years may be rendered as useful to mankind as are a dozen on the other side of the equator, for, as some philosopher remarks, we ought not to measure our lives according to their duration, but according to the good we effect in them. It is true that the quantity of labour does not always represent an equivalent amount of good, and perhaps if the truth were known, some of our apparent progress is of the Sysiphus kind. Nevertheless, it is also true that most of our institutions are sudden in their inception, rapid in their career, abundant in their changes, and precipitate in their termination.¹⁷⁸

The Gardens’ properties, including ‘all the fine works of art and curiosities of all kinds … [and] about 150 plaster casts of classical subjects’ were sold by auction on 21 November 1863.¹⁷⁹ The title to the land, advertised for sale for £8000, was sold the following February for £4100 to a Mr Harcourt who intended to erect a private lunatic asylum upon the property.

*******

The end of Cremorne Gardens was not the end of George Selth Coppin. After resigning from the Legislative Council, he returned to the stage in earnest. He made several intercolonial tours and engaged Charles and Ellen Kean for an Australian tour. He regained control of the Theatre Royal only to see it burned to the ground in 1872. Promptly acquiring a 99-year lease of the land, he raised the capital to build a new Theatre Royal. In 1874, he engaged the Americans J.C. Williamson and his wife, Maggie Moore, for an Australian tour of their production, Struck Oil. In 1881, Williamson became sole lessee of the new Theatre Royal, a stepping stone towards the evolution of Australia’s leading theatrical enterprise of the 20th century, J.C. Williamson Ltd. Returning to politics, albeit quietly, Coppin represented East Melbourne in the Legislative Assembly for two terms, 1874–77 and 1883–88 and represented Melbourne in the Legislative Council in 1889–95. Coppin energetically promoted specific reforms and institutions which had caught his attention. He died at Richmond in March 1906, survived by his wife, their two sons and five daughters, and by two of the three daughters of his first marriage.

To close this essay, I pay tribute, albeit posthumously, to Coppin’s biographer, the late Alec Bagot (1893–1968). Bagot’s Coppin the Great, is an extraordinary work of research and writing, the absence of footnotes notwithstanding. Published in 1965, without the convenience of modern technology and when the serious appreciation of Australia’s cultural history was still to enter the national conversation, makes it even more outstanding.

Endnotes

1. Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great: Father of Australian theatre, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1965, p. 81.

2. Sally O'Neill, ‘Coppin, George Selth (1819–1906)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/coppin-george-selth-3260/text4935, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 7 January 2025.

3. Ancestry.com: New South Wales: Unassisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1826–1922, Series 1291, Reel 1270.

4. Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, 1788–1914, Hale & Iremonger Pty Limited, Sydney, 1985, p. 75.

5. Gail Davis (ed.), Guide to New South Wales State Archives Relating to Convicts and Convict Administration, State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, 2004, pp. 255–56.

6. Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure: A history of Australian popular culture since 1788, Longman Australia Pty Limited, South Melbourne, 1995, pp. 45–46.

7. Waterhouse, p. 44; Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, 1788–1914, Hale & Iremonger,  Sydney, 1985, p. 206.

8. J.M. Golby & A.W. Purdue, The Civilisation of the Crowd: Popular culture in England, 1750–1900, Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, 1999, pp. 91–92.

9. Arthur H. Saxon, Enter Foot and Horse: A History of hippodrama in England and France, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1968, p. 1.

10. ‘Theatricals’, Omnibus and Sydney Spectator, 25 March 1843, p. 10.

11. MHNSW StAC: NRS-905, Main series of letters received [Colonial Secretary], [4/4558.3], Letter No. 43/3389, letter dated 4 May 1853, Letter No. 43/3546, letter dated 9 May 1843.

12. ‘City Council’, Australasian Chronicle (Sydney), 30 May 1843, p. 2; ‘City Council’, Australian (Sydney), 31 May 1843, p. 2.

13. ‘Zoological Institution’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 1852, p. 3.

14. ‘Publican’s Licenses’, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 1843, p. 3; Bagot, p. 81.

15. Bagot, p. 82. The Clown Hotel was also known as the Clown Tavern.

16. ‘Our Weekly Gossip’, Dispatch (Sydney), 13 April 1844, p. 2.

17. Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 September 1844, p. 1.

18. Bagot, p. 85.

19. ‘Local News’, South Australian (Adelaide), 25 September 1846, p. 5.

20. ‘Bench of Magistrates’, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 16 June 1847, p. 1.

21. Advertisement, South Australian Gazette (Adelaide), 24 November 1849, p. 2.

22. ‘New Theatre’, Adelaide Times, 19 October 1850, p. 8.

23. ‘The Semaphore Hotel’, South Australian Register (Adelaide), 18 August 1851, p. 2.

24. Bagot, p. 212.

25. Bagot, p. 150.

26. Ross Thorne, Theatre Buildings in Australia to 1905: From the Time of the first settlement to arrival of the Cinema, Architectural Research Foundation. University of Sydney, 1971, Vol. 1, p. 86.

27. Bagot, p. 157.

28. Irvin, p. 182.

29. Bagot, pp. 178–79.

30. Thorne, p. 86.

31. ‘Public Amusements’, Age (Melbourne), 10 March 1856, p. 3.

32. ‘Detestable Tyranny’, Argus (Melbourne), 3 June 1852, p. 5.

33. Bagot, p. 201.

34. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 28 June 1852, p. 5.

35. Paul McGuire, with Betty Arnott and Frances Margaret McGuire, The Australian Theatre, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1948, p. 90.

36. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 19 October 1854, p. 8.

37. Albert Dressler [ed.], California’s Pioneer Circus, Joseph Andrew Rowe, Founder, H.S. Crocker & Co., San Francisco, 1926, p. 19; E.D. Potts and A. Potts, Young America and Australian Gold: America and the gold rush of the 1850s, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1974, p. 149.

38. Bagot, p. 221.

39. ‘Domestic Intelligence’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 April 1855, p. 5.

40. ‘New Theatre in Lonsdale Street’, Age (Melbourne), 19 April 1855, p. 5.

41. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 7 June 1855, p. 8.

42. Bagot, p. 190.

43. Bagot, p. 192.

44. ‘The New Amphitheatre, Spring Street’, Argus (Melbourne), 29 August 1854, p. 5.

45. ‘Mummer Memoirs’, Sydney Sportsman, 8 January 1908, p. 3.

46. The first of these three ‘drafts’ arrived in Port Phillip by the Callibar after a 91-day voyage from London. See: ‘Arrival of Mr Barry, The Celebrated Clown’, Argus (Melbourne), 6 November 1854, p. 8.

47. ‘Astley’s Amphitheatre’, Age (Melbourne), 11 January 1855, p. 5.

48. G.D.H. Cole & Raymond Postgate, The Common People, 1746–1946, Methuen, London, 1968, p. 347.

49. Demographia. com, 2025.

50. Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians, Historical Statistics, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, 1987, p. 29.

51. VPRS 267/1/71/2483; ‘Closing of Astley’s’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 June 1855, p. 5; Irvin, p. 181.

52. ‘Closing of Astley’s Amphitheatre’, Argus (Melbourne), 21 July 1855, p. 8.

53. ‘The Theatres’, Argus (Melbourne), 18 February 1856, p. 5.

54. Bagot, p. 202.

55. ‘Melbourne’, Geelong Advertiser, 14 March 1856, p. 2.

56. ‘The Theatres’, Age (Melbourne), 11 March 1856, p. 2.

57. ‘Royal Amphitheatre’, Age (Melbourne), 19 March 1856, p. 3.

58. ‘Theatrical Representation vs Public Morals’, Age (Melbourne), 29 March 1856, p. 3.

59, Bagot, pp. 202–03.

60. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 12 April 1856, p. 8.

61. Bagot, p. 200.

62. ‘Mr Black and the Theatre Royal’, Age (Melbourne), 9 October 1855, p. 5.

63. Bagot, pp. 200, 201–02.

64. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 12 April 1856, p. 8; ‘Commercial Intelligence’, Argus (Melbourne), 12 May 1856, p. 4; Bagot, p. 204.

65. Wilfrid Blunt, The Ark in the Park: The zoo in the nineteenth century, Hamilton, London, 1976, pp. 74–75.

66. ‘A Theatre for the Australian Gold Diggings’, Argus (Melbourne), 11 October 1852, p. 5.

67. VPRS 1189/242/K54/14281; Mimi Colligan, ‘Cremorne Gardens, Richmond, And the Modelled Panoramas, 1853 to 1863’, Victorian Historical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, November 1995, p. 123.

68. ‘St Leon’s Circus at Wangaratta’, Ovens & Murray Advertiser (Beechworth), 22 December 1877, p. 4.

69. Advertisement, Argus(Melbourne), 22 June 1853, p. 8.

70. Thorne, p.128.

71. Colligan, 1995; VPRS 1189/242/K54/14281.

72. ‘Cremorne Gardens’, Argus(Melbourne), 29 October 1853, p. 5.

73. ‘Our Charitable Institutions’, Argus(Melbourne), 10 December 1853, p. 5.

74. W.C. Coup, cited in Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & society under the American big top, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2002, p. 17. 

75. ‘Fashionable Arrivals’, Argus(Melbourne), 17 January 1854, p. 4.

76. ‘Fashionable Arrivals’, Argus(Melbourne), 18 January 1854, p. 5.

77. Unable to live on his $1,200 a month gold-inflated salary in San Francisco, Foley had followed J.A. Rowe to Australia. See: Dressler, pp. 10–11.

78. Advertisement, Argus(Melbourne), 29 June 1854, p. 8. In 1849, the first circus seen in Melbourne, Hayes’, briefly occupied a site on the south side of Little Bourke Street East, between Russell and Stephen (now Exhibition) Streets. It has been speculated that the structural remnants Hayes left behind were incorporated into Noble’s circus which opened on a block further east in February 1852 and which later became the Salle de Valentino. Two sketches by S.T. Gill made early in 1854 show the Salle de Valentino’s tent-like interior: five rows of sloping benches surrounding a circus ring boarded over to serve as a dance floor with a small platform projected into one side of the ring. See: Ralph Marsden, ‘Salle de Valentino’, On Stage, 2004, pp. 22–24.

79. ‘The Greatest Performer in Victoria’, Courier(Hobart Town), 8 July 1854, p. 3.

80. Advertisement, Argus(Melbourne), 9 October 1854, p. 8.

81. Advertisement, Argus(Melbourne), 19 February 1855, p. 8.

82. Christmas Festivities and Amusements’, Argus(Melbourne), 26 December 1854, p. 5.

83. ‘Insolvent Court’, Argus(Melbourne), 31 May 1855, p. 6.

84. ‘Supreme Court’, Argus(Melbourne), 9 March 1855, p. 5. The Act in Council, No. 24 of 1855 was entitled ‘An Act to make provision for the Sale of Fermented and Spirituous Liquors and Refreshments in certain Districts’. See: ‘Confirmation of Acts of Council’, Argus(Melbourne), 24 January 1855, p. 5.

85. ‘Insolvent Court’, Argus(Melbourne), 31 May 1855, p. 6.

86. ‘Astley’s Amphitheatre: Mr Ellis’s Benefit’, Argus(Melbourne), 31 March 1855, p. 5.

87. ‘New Insolvents’, Argus(Melbourne), 5 April 1855, p. 6.

88. ‘Auction Sale Extraordinary’, Argus(Melbourne), 9 March 1855, p. 5.

89. ‘Cremorne Gardens’, Argus(Melbourne), 21 June 1856, p. 5. The ‘fee-simple’ gave Coppin a permanent and absolute tenure in the land and the freedom to dispose of it as he chose.

90. Colligan, p. 126; Bagot, p. 223.

91. ‘Opening of Cremorne Gardens’, Argus(Melbourne), 3 November 1856, p. 5.

92. Bagot, p. 212.

93. Advertisements, Argus(Melbourne), 22 November 1856, p. 8, 29 November 1856, p. 8.

94. Advertisement, Argus(Melbourne), 26 December 1856, p. 8.

95. Bagot, p. 234.

96. Bagot, p. 240.

97. Bagot, p. 223.

98. Bagot, p. 220.

99. ‘Music and Drama’, Age(Melbourne), 2 February 1857, p. 3.

100. Bagot, p. 206.

101. Bagot, p. 207.

102. Advertisement, Empire(Sydney), 14 June 1855, p. 1.

103. Bagot, 1965, p. 207.

104. ‘Music and Drama’, Age(Melbourne), 2 February 1857, p. 3.

105. ‘Law Report’, Argus(Melbourne), 25 November 1857, p. 6. Black converted the Amphitheatre into a conventional theatre which re-opened as the Princess’s Theatre in April 1857. Owing to its makeshift accommodation, poor lighting and inadequate ventilation, the Princess’s was not a popular theatre. It was completely renovated in 1865. See: Robyn Ridett, Ross Thorne, ‘Princess Theatre, Melbourne’, in Philip Parsons, General Editor, Companion to Theatre in Australia, Currency Press in association with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, 1995, p. 465.

106. Irvin, p. 183.

107. ‘Public Amusements’, Argus(Melbourne), 29 May 1857, p. 6.

108. ‘Under the Big Top: The Life Story of George Wirth, Circus Proprietor’, Life: A record for busy folk (Melbourne), Part V, 15 May 1933, pp. 406–10.

109. ‘Cremorne Gardens Fair’, Argus (Melbourne), 31 December 1858, p. 5.

110. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 11 December 1858, p. 8.

111. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 17 December 1856, p. 8.

112. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 27 December 1858, p. 8.

113. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 31 December 1860, p. 8.

114. Advertisements, Argus (Melbourne), 21 December 1861, p. 8, 31 December 1862, p. 8.

115. ‘Amusements’, Argus (Melbourne), 17 June 1859, p. 1.

116. Bagot, p. 222; ‘The Theatres’, Argus (Melbourne), 19 July 1859, p. 5.

117. ‘The Theatres’, Argus (Melbourne), 19 July 1859, p. 5.

118. ‘Cremorne’, Argus (Melbourne), 16 December 1859, p. 7.

119. ‘Miscellaneous’, Argus (Melbourne), 17 December 1859, p. 2.

120. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 9 March 1860, p. 8.

121. Untitled article, Argus (Melbourne), 2 November 1860, p. 5. In 1901, the site was briefly occupied by a large Australian outback ‘wagon’ circus that wandered into Melbourne, Eroni Bros Colossal Circus and Menagerie. Despite ‘big business’, ‘old Bill’ Eroni [William G. Perry] closed the season prematurely as there was ‘too much noise’. By that time and due in no small measure to Coppin’s initiatives several decades earlier, Melbourne had developed into Australia’s affluent and discriminating theatrical capital. See: ‘At Poverty Point’, Bulletin (Sydney), 18 May 1901, p. 25; ‘At Poverty Point’, Bulletin (Sydney), 9 July 1914, p. 9; ‘At Poverty Point’, Bulletin (Sydney), 16 February 1905, p. 30.

122. ‘Departure of Mr Coppin for England’, Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne), 27 June 1857, p. 2.

123. ‘Theatres’, Argus (Melbourne), 16 January 1858, p. 6.

124. ‘The signal exploits of Mr H. Henden, Aeronaut’, Canberra Times, 14 January 1984, p. 15.

125. Owing to existing commitments, Anderson did not make his appearance in Melbourne until June 1858 when he opened at the Theatre Royal. Anderson’s success in Australia exceeded ‘all his previous good fortune’. He was paid the ‘generous’ sum of £10,000 for the six-month engagement. See: ‘Anglo-Australian Items’, Age (Melbourne), 21 December 1857, p. 5; ‘A Wizard’s View of Australia’, Age (Melbourne), 24 December 1858, p. 6.

126. ‘Shipping Intelligence’, Argus (Melbourne), 9 January 1858, p. 4; Bagot, p. 211.

127. ‘Mail Steam Packet Company’s Litigation’, Argus (Melbourne), 19 January 1858, p. 4; Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 29 January 1858, p. 8. The name of the balloon is sometimes given as the Australian.

128. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 29 January 1858, p. 8; ‘Cremorne’, Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne), 30 January 1858, p. 2.

129. Advertisement, Age (Melbourne), 1 February 1858, p. 1.

130. ‘First Balloon Ascent in the Australian Colonies’, Argus (Melbourne), 2 February 1858, p. 5.

131. My Note Book (Melbourne), 6 February 1858, pp. 470–72.

132. ‘Theatre Royal’, Argus (Melbourne), 2 February 1858, p. 5.

133. ‘Attempted Balloon Ascent’, Cornwall Chronicle (Launceston), 15 March 1845, p. 2.

134. ‘Ballooning’, Cornwall Chronicle(Launceston), 14 January 1846, p. 35.

135. ‘The Monster Balloon Ascent’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 November 1856, p. 2; ‘The Sydney Balloon’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December 1856, p. 5.

136. ‘The Sydney Balloon—Attempted Descent and Failure—Riotous Proceedings and Serious Accident’, Empire (Sydney), 16 December 1856, p. 4.

137. Helene Rogers, Lighter than Air: Australian ballooning history, The author, 2021, p. 7.

138. Richard Holmes, Falling Upwards: How we took to the air, William Collins, London, 2013, pp. 16, 53, 57.

139. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr, The American Heritage History of Flight, American Heritage Publishing Co Inc, New York, 1962, p. 41.

140. Holmes, p. 56.

141. Dave Coke and Alan Borg, Vauxhall Gadens: A history, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2011, pp. 319ff.

142. ‘Radford’s Circus’, Cornwall Chronicle(Launceston), 13 January 1849, p. 300.

143. Advertisement, Cornwall Chronicle(Launceston), 26 January 1850, p. 58.

144. Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 May 1850, p. 1.

145. Rogers, pp. 21ff.

146. ‘First Balloon Ascent in the Australian Colonies’, Argus (Melbourne), 2 February 1858, p. 5.

147. Bagot, p. 215.

148. ‘Opening of Cremorne Gardens’, Argus (Melbourne), 3 November 1856, p. 5.

149. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 30 October 1856, p. 8

150. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 2 December 1856, p. 8; ‘Cremorne Gardens’, Argus (Melbourne), 26 December 1856, p. 5.

151. ‘Social’, Age (Melbourne), 12 November 1856, p. 5; ‘Eight Hours Movement’, Age (Melbourne), 22 April 1857, p. 5.

152. ‘Cremorne Gardens: Complimentary Benefit to Mr Coppin’, Age (Melbourne), 5 December 1856, p. 6.

153. ‘Cremorne Gardens’, Argus (Melbourne), 16 November 1858, p. 5; Gippsland Guardian, 7 October 1859, p. 2.

154. Advertisement, Age (Melbourne), 13 November 1858, p. 1; Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 24 December 1859, p. 8.

155. See Mark St Leon, ‘Beaumont & Waller’s Botanical & Zoological Gardens, at the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany Bay 1848–61’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 9, Part 1, June 2023, pp. 30–54.

156. Tom L. McKnight, The Camel in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1969, p. 19.

157. Bagot, pp. 217–18.

158. Advertisement, Age (Melbourne), 14 November 1859, p. 1.

159. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 28 November 1859, p. 8.

160. ‘Exploration of the Interior’, Argus (Melbourne), 24 December 1857, p. 4.

161. ‘Australian Exploration’, Argus (Melbourne), 27 October 1859, p. 6.

162. Untitled article, Argus (Melbourne), 17 December 1859, p. 5.

163. Tim Bonyhady, Burke & Wills: From Melbourne to myth, David Ell Press Pty Ltd, Balmain, 1991, p. 44.

164. ‘Miscellaneous’, Age (Melbourne), 23 June 1860, p. 5.

165. ‘Golden Age Almanac’, Golden Age (Queanbeyan), 7 January 1864, p. 4.

166. Bonyhady, pp. 195, 222; ‘King, The Explorer’, Mount Alexander Mail, 1 January 1862, p. 3.

167. Russell Ward, The Australian Legend, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1958, pp. 113–14.

168. Bagot, p. 231.

169. H.L. Oppenheim, ‘Brooke, Gustavus Vaughan (1818–1866)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brooke-gustavus-vaughan-3064/text4519, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 24 January 2025.

170. ‘News of the Week’, Argus (Melbourne), 27 February 1864, p. 2

171. ‘Cremorne Gardens’, Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne), 20 December 1862, p. 2.

172. ‘Boxing Day’, Argus (Melbourne), 27 December 1862, p. 5; Ancestry.com: Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839–1923: Bartine arrived in Port Philip by the Norfolk from Gravesend on 17 October 1862. Bartine’s true name was Patrick Mahoney.

173. Steve Gossard, A Reckless Era of Aerial Performance: The evolution of the trapeze, 1991, pp. 12, 43.

174. Antony Hippisley Coxe, A Seat at the Circus, Macmillan, London, 1980, pp. 31–35.

175. ‘Christmas Festivities: Cremorne Gardens’, Age (Melbourne), 27 December 1862, p. 5.

176. Advertisement, Argus (Melbourne), 7 February 1863, p. 8.

177. ‘Botany Bay’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1861, p 5.

178. ‘The Last of Cremorne’, Herald (Melbourne), 10 February 1863, p. 7.

179. Untitled article, Argus (Melbourne), 21 November 1863, p. 4.

180. ‘News of the Week’, Argus(Melbourne), 27 February 1864, p. 2.

English actor, manager & theatre owner. Né George Selth Coppin. Born 8 April 1819, Steyning, Sussex, England. Son of George Selth Coppin and Elizabeth Jane Jackson. Married (1) Maria Watkins Burroughs (actress) (de facto), (2) Harriet Bray, 1855, (3) Lucy Hilsden. Died 14 March 1906, Richmond, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

On stage in Australia from 1843. Entrepreneur and low comedian. See biography by Alec Bagot for further information.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, pages ii, 21, 36, 212.

The year is 1861 and the day after Christmas—it’s time for our pantomime—which just happens to be, this year, Harlequin Valentine and Orson; or, The Task of Romance and the Tricks of theSpirit of Fun, and arriving in Melbourne, just two days before, is the All England Eleven, among which is my great grandfather Charles Lawrence, a member of the team who went on to stay in Australia and ultimately, take on tour to the United Kingdom in 1867, a team of Aboriginal cricketers. I can’t help but wonder—did he get to see that pantomime that December? He certainly became acquainted, at a much later date, with the Coppin family when his daughter Millicent became acquainted with George’s daughter Daisie.

Stephenson’s Team of English Cricketers in Australia—24 December 1861

Author’s collection

Enough of that—what of the actual production? Although Coppin is not listed as its director, between 1856 and 1869 its author (or adaptor) William Mower Akhurst created ten Christmas pantomimes for the Theatre Royal in Bourke Street and the name John Hennings, as scenic artist/designer, appears over and over. In 1856 George Coppin and Gustavus Brooke had become the Theatre Royal’s new managers and owners—a partnership which lasted a mere three years—but Coppin proceeded to direct the theatre’s plays, operas and pantomimes all through the 1860s—and way, way beyond.

Returning to Harlequin Valentine and Orson in 1861, the glorification of Burke and Wills— ‘these brave men’—was painted by Hennings as the very fitting finale to the production. One can only try to imagine this artwork in full colour, rather than the detailed black and white drawing shown here!

Apotheosis of Burke & Wills

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Melbourne Library and torchlight procession, November 1867

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

John Hennings in 1868

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

From the early 1840s through to the mid 1890s George Coppin would have employed or involved a countless number of ‘creatives’—set and costume designers, scenic artists, costume makers, propsmen—not to mention the stage managers and crews—but only one name really stands out—occurs over and over again—that of John Hennings whose career here in Australia ran from the mid 1850s to the late 1890s. There are other names, collaborators and assistants but I am using Hennings’ 1860s pantomime involvement as a basis. There were literally dozens more productions where Coppin’s name appears in the listings available to us, although many, of course, were simply repeats, the same panto or play presented in a different theatre or state.

In 1855 at the age of twenty John Hennings (Johann Friederich Hennings), son of Danish-born parents, arrived in Melbourne, attracted as so many were, by the Victorian Gold Fields. He already had some decorating and artistic experience and it was not long before he found work as a scenic artist in various theatres, in Adelaide, Geelong, Sydney and Melbourne, and not long before he began his long association with George Coppin, with the Theatre Royal, the Princess’s and the Haymarket theatres, and also the Cremorne Gardens’ Pantheon Theatre. For at least three decades he dominated Melbourne’s stage design, responsible for an enormous body of work on plays, pantomimes and operas—backdrops and front-cloths, flats and borders, and most famously, panoramas.  During the 1860s he worked with, mentored or was assisted by, Alfred Clint, William Pitt snr, William J. Wilson, Benjamin Tannett and Messrs. Freyberger, Fry, Holmes and Opie—and no doubt many others—to some of whom we shall return shortly.

In 1863 to celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra, Hennings and one Benjamin Tannett painted transparencies that were displayed on the city’s buildings, and four years later when the Duke and Duchess of York visited an illumination was incorporated in the pantomime at the Theatre Royal here—Tom Tom, the Piper’s Son, and Mary Mary, Quite Contrary; or, Harlequin Piggy Wiggy, and the Good Child’s History of England.

Other celebrations that year, 1867, included transparent scenes depicting the Aboriginal cricket team, prior to their departing Australian shores—scenes ‘showing their progress from utter barbarism to the highest state of civilization’! In Sydney, on board the royal vessel Galatea, Hennings painted a view of Windsor Castle for the Duke and Duchess.

Returning to 1863, Hennings and Tannett created the artwork for a moving panorama of European Grand Tour views—these were exhibited at the Melbourne Polytechnic Institute in Bourke Street East. And for the 1869 pantomime The House that Jack Built; or, Harlequin Progress and the Loves, Laughs, Laments and Labours of Jack Melbourne and Little Victoria, Hennings presented another moving panorama, a complex allegory that symbolized Melbourne’s growth and development and incorporated transportation scenes that could also stand as quite separate and distinct works of art, while still keeping within the form or frame of a theatre piece.

The painter Frederick McCubbin was said to be most impressed by Hennings’ work, as were the critics, who praised consistently, although not without the odd quibble. During the 1860s Hennings had joined the management of the Theatre Royal, in partnership with Coppin, Richard Stewart (father of Nellie and Docie) and Henry Richard Harwood.

Hennings was known to construct small 3-dimensional models to scale in order to see how separate planes could be translated into a single painted surface. He would employ this technique if he needed to incorporate figures within the back-cloth’s composition. Set designers in the latter part of the 19th century tended to use a scale of half an inch to the foot (12 inches) or 1:24—not all that different to the scale often used now of 1:25.

Late 19th century set model—Bland Holt production

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Colour blocks reduced to powder

Walker & Skelly

Initial designs or models were generally executed in watercolour (or gouache)—the firm of Winsor & Newton was established in London in 1832 and produced many one-shilling hand-books on art—with titles such as ‘painting in watercolour and oil’, ‘the elements of perspective’, ‘the art of mural decoration’ and so on. But for the stage-cloths the designer’s assistant, or colourman, utilizing a mortar and pestle, would grind blocks of colour to a very fine powder, then mix this with size, a liquid glue obtained from boiling rabbit bones and skin. This enabled the paint to bond to canvas, hessian or wood. If size had not been added to the paint, or distemper, would flake or rub off. Oil paint, a different beast altogether, could also be the medium but presumably a more expensive alternative, although probably necessary when decorating glass to create a transparent effect.

Hennings continued to be involved with the Theatre Royal’s plays and pantomimes through to the 1890s. His work on panoramas and cycloramas also continued and we are fortunate that his 1892 cyclorama of Early Melbourne has managed to survive and has been meticulously and lovingly preserved at the State Library of Victoria.

Born in 1820 in Sunderland, England, William Pitt arrived in Australia just two years prior to Hennings. He became associated with George Coppin both as a publican—when he died in 1879 he was the licensee of the Theatre Royal’s Café de Paris—and as a scenic artist when he collaborated with Hennings, William J. Wilson, Benjamin Tannett and Signor Arrigoni. In 1867 Pitt was the principal scenic artist on the Royal Haymarket production of Harlequin Rumpelstiltskin; or, the Demon Dwarf of the Goblin Gold Mines, and the Prince and the Miller’s Daughter. The pantomime ended with a Grand Transformation Scene: A Harlequinade—played out in ‘three well-known shops in a somewhat prominent street’ and a Melbourne telegraph office. In 1870 Pitt became the first treasurer of the Victorian Academy of Art where his paintings were exhibited. His son William Pitt jnr was born in 1855 and trained as an architect, ultimately designing, rebuilding or improving theatres in Melbourne and Ballarat, Hobart, Sydney and New Zealand. In the 1880s, after Pitt snr’s death, Coppin commissioned son William to design what became Gordon House, in Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street.

Roughly ten years after Hennings, English artist Alfred Clint(1842–1923) arrived on these shores. His father was a painter and scenic artist, his grandfather an ARA portraitist, his brothers and uncles all artists. Initially Alfred assisted Hennings at the Theatre Royal and contributed to many of the pantomimes, before moving to Sydney in the late 1860s, where he continued to work in several Sydney theatres, as well as join the staff of Sydney Punch—and later The Bulletin—as a cartoonist. Most notably Clint painted settings for the 1867 pantomime Tom Tom, the Piper’s Son, and Mary Mary, Quite Contrary; or, Harlequin Piggy Wiggy, and the Good Child’s History ofEngland, one of the many entertainments enjoyed by Prince Alfred (the Duke of Edinburgh), during his royal visit. Apprenticed to their father, all three of Clint’s sons became artists and scenic painters, well and truly upholding the family tradition!

Railway to Circular Quay—sketch by Alfred Clint

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Reverting to 1857, and two years after Hennings’ appearance on these shores, 47-year-old English-born Benjamin Tannett arrived in Melbourne, travelling via Swiftsure from Plymouth, with his second wife Isabelle and Joseph, a son from his first marriage. Tannett was an established theatrical scene-painter and actor, and in no time at all he was employed by Coppin and was working alongside ‘the master’ John Hennings. In 1858 Tannett and William Pitt snr had painted ‘a very beautiful act-drop with a representation of Shakespeare’s birthplace’ for Melbourne’s redecorated Theatre Royal. In 1861 at the Princess’s Theatre Tannett was scenic artist on Harlequin Mother Hubbard and Puss in Boots, creating a ‘beautiful panorama of Australian scenery—corn field, vineyards (they may be), and bush’. Two years later Tannett and Hennings collaborated on the panorama of European Grand Tour views, as mentioned earlier. Sadly, the following year, 1864, and after a short illness, Benjamin Tannett died in Geelong, presumably due to a heart condition: a career cut tragically short at the early age of 54.

Also arriving in Melbourne the same year as Hennings, was the actor, manager and scene painter William J. Wilson, whose father and grandfather were both artists of some repute. Son William worked in Melbourne and Sydney’s theatres, visited New Zealand in 1863 before returning here, only to move permanently to Sydney. He was considered to be that city’s answer to an artist of Hennings’ calibre; he worked on plays, operas, pantomimes and moving panoramas. In Sydney he formed a partnership with Alexander Habbe (1829–1896), a Danish scene painter who had also headed here, initially—along with so many others—for the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s.

Other scene painters who worked with or for Hennings during the 1860s (and beyond) included Mouritz Freyberger, Charles Fry, Henry Holmes, Messrs. Liddle and Douglas, and Patrick (Joseph) Little. This last-named arrived in Australia from Dublin in 1860 and worked as a scenic artist in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania. He and his descendants established a studio specialising in scenic art in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. The company survived through to 1918.

Patrick Joseph Little

Peter Little Collection

William J. Wilson

Australian Variety Theatre Archive

German-born Mouritz Freyberger (1838–1886) at the age of 24 was working as a scene painter in Melbourne theatres but was also established as a professional photographer. He assisted Hennings in 1864 at the Theatre Royal with the ‘splendid pictorial effects’ for the pantomime The Enchanted Isle, first performed here in 1857, but adapted from William and Robert Brough’s 1848 (London) burlesque extravaganza. Robert’s son—also named Robert—is best known as a co-founder, in 1886, of the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company. The full title of the production: The Enchanted Isle; or, Harlequin the Mysterious Prince and the Magician Father; or, Raising the Wind on the Most Approved Principles was described as a ‘travesty of Shakespeare’s Tempest’. For the 1867 visit of the Duke of Edinburgh Freyberger painted a large transparency for Robertson’s Collins Street bookshop, to illustrate the saying ‘The sun never sets on the British dominions’. A painted illusion of the façade of the Melbourne Public Library (now State Library of Victoria) was also commissioned for the same occasion. He worked often with Hennings, and sometimes as the chief painter, as with a production of the Princess’s Theatre’s Frou Frou in 1870. He moved to India where he lived for many years only to return here in 1886, arriving back a mere five days before his untimely death at the age of 48.

The Enchanted Isle—illustration for original production in London in 1848

Adelphi Theatre Calendar

Watercolour painting of landscape by W.J. Wilson, c.1865

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Costume makers were almost invariably women—Mrs. Hancock, Mrs. Croucher and Mrs. Jager/Jagar—the designs generally adapted from those used earlier in English productions or from traditional sources. Costumes are listed as being made, rather than designed. Interesting to speculate just who brought it upon themselves to transport designs or sketches from ‘the old country’… (Later pantomimes give us the names of designers such as Alfred Maltby, London’s Monsieur and Madame Alias, Madame Beaumont, Atillio Comelli and Australian-born Will R. Barnes. Multi-talented Maltby was also an actor and playwright.) James Brogden and Mr. Dennis are listed as propsmen and Herr James Cushla was also a technician and a mask-maker. It is recorded that this last-named arrived in Melbourne from Plymouth, on the same vessel Swiftsure as Benjamin Tannett, in late 1857, with his wife and two young daughters, and also, in the company of a troupe of ‘tableau performers’. Another of many talents, Cushla had, in addition to his technical and mask-making skills, a long career here as a living statue, appearing first at Cremorne Gardens, only weeks after arriving here. Over the next 26 years he created a repertoire of more than one hundred poses and tableaux.

Mother Goose pantomime—Attilio Comelli (1858–1925)

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Grimaldi’s costume in the role of Orson in Valentine and Orson, London, 1806

Harvard Theatre Collection

I have concentrated on perhaps the rather too obvious ‘creatives’ of the 1860s but plainly, there are so many more stories to be told, and in the decades to follow, for example, those of Phil Goatcher, John Brunton, William R. Coleman, George Gordon and Walter Brookes Spong. Whether these tales are of the scenic artist, his assistant, the costume-maker or mask-maker, what rich and interesting times—times of which much has been written and which will certainly continue to be written.

Late 19th century set pieces

Miles Kenyon Collection

Late 19th century water-colour sketch for back-cloth

Miles Kenyon Collection

Life spans of twelve scenic artists:

Benjamin Tannett—1810–1864

William Pitt (senior)—1819–1879

William J. Wilson—1833–1909

John Hennings—1835–1898

Mouritz Freyberger—1838–1886

George Gordon—1839–1899

Patrick Joseph Little—1840–1907

Alfred Clint—1842–1923

John Brunton—1849–1909

Walter Brookes Spong—1851–1929

Phil Goatcher—1852–1931

William Rowland Coleman—1864–1932

With grateful thanks to the following sources:

Raymond Walker & David Skelly, Backdrop to a Legend, Self published limited edition, 2018

Mimi Colligan, Canvas Documentaries, Melbourne University Press, 2002

Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great, Melbourne University Press, 1965

Anita Callaway, Visual Ephemera: Theatrical art in 19th century Australia, University New South Wales Press, 2000

Viola Tait, Dames, Principal Boys…..and All That, Macmillan, 2001

AusStage

Australian Variety Theatre Archive

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Wikipedia

When georgeand Maria Coppin arrived in Sydney in the early 1840s, it was to a theatre scene dominated by proprietor Joseph Wyatt. Wyatt had initially been a convict transported in 1814 to New South Wales for the theft of a watch, before being officially pardoned in 1819. Some years later, Wyatt embarked on what was to become a very successful haberdashery business in Pitt Street. Selling this business in 1833, Wyatt looked towards a completely different investment opportunity—theatres.

At this time, there was one professional theatre in Sydney. Barnett Levey had opened the Theatre Royal, Sydney’s first official licensed theatre, on 5 October 1833 in George Street at the rear of the Royal Hotel. In April 1835, Wyatt was one of six lessees who took over the running of the Theatre Royal from Levey. By the following year, Wyatt had bought out the other Theatre Royal partners to become the sole lessee.

Shortly after, on 2 July 1836, The Commercial Journal and Advertiser reported an exciting new development for Sydney theatre: ‘We understand that Mr Wyatt has contracted for the immediate erection of a new Theatre in Pitt-street’.¹ This was to be Sydney’s second theatre—the Royal Victoria Theatre—which was built by Wyatt in partnership with hotelier William Knight, and situated at the rear of Levey’s Theatre Royal. The foundation stone was laid on 7 September 1836.

Not everyone was happy with Wyatt’s increasing monopoly. A letter to the editor of the Sydney Gazette on 7 July 1936 questioned the fairness of expecting a small town, as Sydney was at the time, to support two theatres. The letter’s author, anonymously signed as ‘Common Sense’, also complained that ‘It is very well known that Mr Jospeh Wyatt is a very rich man, and it is also known that Mr Barnett Levey is a poor one’, and pleads ‘why not let the poor fellow [Levey] alone—he has a family to support—Mr Wyatt has none’.² 

As it was, Barnett Levey died in October of 1837. Wyatt then bought the Theatre Royal from Levey’s widow, and promptly closed it down in [24] March 1838. Just a few days later, Wyatt opened his Royal Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street. The opening performances on 26 March 1838 were Othello and the farce The Middy Ashore.

The Royal Victoria Theatre was Sydney’s second official theatre and also the first large-scale theatre in Australia. The architect Henry Robertson designed the theatre in the Regency Colonial style, it consisted of four tiers, and there was room for an audience of 1,900 people. Levey’s Theatre Royal, in comparison, had three tiers and seated an audience of around 900.³

Reconstructed perspective of the Royal Victoria Theatre after Fowles’ elevation in Sydney in 1848. Drawing by S. Clarke. From Theatres in Australia (1977) by Ross Thorne, p.11.

Across the ocean, it was around this time that actor George Selth Coppin decided to broaden his horizon of work opportunities. One could say that Coppin had been born to always find a stage. He arrived in 1819 in the Sussex market town of Steyning, to a mother and father who were part of Britain’s ‘strolling players’ travelling circuit. His father, George Selth Coppin (senior) had run away from a medical apprenticeship to join the stage at the age of 19, and married fellow player twice his age, Elizabeth Jane Jackson. George (junior) was already joining his family on the stage with a violin as a young child and found an early penchant for comedic impressions, and, with his half-sister Emma, as a family they continued to roam the county theatre circuits.

Maria Coppin in The Loan of a Lover, 1843. From Australian Stage Album (1975) by Brian Carroll, p.31.By the time Coppin set out on his own career at the age of 16, he was a jack of all theatre trades. As a young man, Coppin continued to travel to where there was theatre work—London and the counties, Scotland and Ireland. It was in September 1841 on the stage of Dublin’s Abbey Street Theatre that Coppin met Maria Watkins Burroughs. Soon after, although never officially married, they were perpetually known as ‘Mr and Mrs Coppin’.

In terms of what prompted the Coppins to journey to Australia, Alec Bagot, author of the biography Coppin the Great, gives the reasons as multipart, suggesting a combination of factors—the decline of both the ‘strolling’ county circuits and the theatre in Ireland; favourable talk and government incentives to migrate to Australia; and general actors’ gossip about a recent visit by Sydney theatre proprietor Joseph Wyatt who had set sail in 1841 on the Royal Georgefrom Sydney to London in order to ‘enlist recruits’⁴ for his Royal Victoria Theatre.

It is now legend that a coin was ceremoniously tossed by the Coppins to decide between Australia (George’s choice) and America (Maria’s birthplace and choice). Coppin recalls, ‘A toss of a penny decided me in coming to Australia rather than going to America’.⁵ Having been decided thusly, he purchased two Intermediate Class fares to Sydney for £40. The couple set sail for Sydney on the first-rate ship Templar leaving from Liverpool on 2 November 1842.

While aboard the Templar, Coppin continued to prove himself a superstitious man. Bagot reports that as well as Mr Coppin tossing that fateful coin into the ocean ‘for luck’ as they left Liverpool, the couple saw the Great March Comet of 1843 (scientifically known as C/1843 D1) from the ship deck as they neared Australia, and which they thought a good omen.

During their voyage, the Templar docked at Cape Town on 7 January 1843 for three weeks. Luck was indeed on their side when they serendipitously ran into an old acquaintance, a captain stationed there, and they were able to secure a paid gig at the barracks theatre.

On 10 March 1843, George Coppin and Maria Watkins Burroughs arrived into Sydney on the Templar.Also on board was Sydney’s first Catholic Archbishop, John Bede Polding, returning from two years abroad. The archbishop alighted to great ceremony, with bands and a large welcome crowd. The other passengers, including the Coppins, diligently waited before they set foot on Sydney soil.

Sydney of the early 1840s that the Coppins arrived in was going through a transition from colony to city. Convict transportations to the colony of New South Wales had ceased in 1840,⁶ and in 1842 Sydney was officially declared a city.⁷However, the 1840s were also a time of financial depression in the fledgling city. In the UK, this decade became known as the Hungry Forties. The effect carried through to its colony of New South Wales, when the initial promise of a distant land of sunshine overstimulated the economy with confidence, resulting in raised property prices, overproduction of wool and an influx of imports. When the optimism burst in the early 1840s, bankruptcies rose sharply and New South Wales fell into economic depression.⁸

George Coppin, from ‘Heads of the People’ by S.T. Gill, 1849. State Library South Australia, Adelaide.Nevertheless, as the Coppins disembarked from the Templar on that Friday afternoon, they were enthusiastic. They wasted no time in gaining the lay of the land from the landlord of their George Street lodgings, particularly intelligence of Sydney’s theatre. A very determined George and Maria secured an interview for the very next morning with Jospeh Wyatt and William Knight at the Royal Victoria Theatre.

So it was that the Coppins met with Wyatt and Knight on Saturday, 11 March 1843, the morning after their arrival in Sydney. Wyatt and Knight’s Royal Victoria Theatre was not doing so well as it could. Perhaps it was for this reason that they declined to hire the Coppins for a salary. The ever-enterprising George therefore made an offer—to work without salary, and instead share in the profit of a season of performances. They had a deal.

Two plays were decided upon by the Coppins—a drama and comedy to showcase their versatility. First decided upon was The Stranger, an English version of German playwright August von Kotzebue’s 1790 play Menschenhass und Reue (translated as ‘Misanthropy and Repentance’), and which was a melodramatic drama exploring betrayal, alienation and identity.

The second piece chosen was The Loan of a Lover by British playwright James Planche. This was a vaudeville comedic farce for six players in one act, and had first been performed in 1834 at the London’s Royal Olympic Theatre.

On that same Saturday, Coppin also paid a visit to the Herald’s office in lower George Street, where he introduced himself to the editors Kemp and Fairfax. Shipping news published in the Sydney Morning Herald the day before had reported the arrival of a ‘Mr and Miss Coppin’.⁹At the newspaper offices, the passenger list was consulted to ascertain that the entry was indeed ‘Mrs Coppin’. By way of an apology for this error, the editors promised forthcoming coverage on their upcoming theatrical debut.

George and Maria promptly started rehearsals for their debut at the Royal Victoria Theatre. A few days after their arrival in Sydney, on Wednesday 15 March, The Australian contained a rather snarky entry:

By the Templar we have an addition to our Thespian forces, by the arrival of Mr and Mrs Coppin, from Liverpool. The fame of these aspirants has certainly not yet reached us in ‘lands Australian’ and we would advise all stars of the northern hemisphere to bring with them some credentials as to their degree when they venture into the cycle of the southern. However, we shall not pronounce of the merits of the new arrivals before we have an opportunity of tasting a ‘spice of their quality,’ and whilst we must regret that they have brought no billsfor our acceptance, we are not indisposed to give them letters of credit.¹⁰

By Friday 17 March, The Australian had back-peddled:

We have hither forborne severe comment on Mr Wyatt’s importation, regarding it as a managerial error, the effect of bad judgement; and feeling satisfied that as soon as possible he would remedy the evil. This, we are happy to say, he promises to do forthwith, and the announcement for tomorrow evening of The Stranger, in which Mrs Coppin will make her curtsey to a Sydney audience in the arduous part of Mrs Haller; and also of The Loan of a Lover, in which Mr Coppin will personate Peter Spyke, is a favourable earnest of the long desired reform in the affairs of the Victoria.¹¹

It seems that The Australian had since sighted sources, as they went on to talk about the reported talents of George and Maria—‘… we have seen several English and Irish papers of recent date, in which their efforts are reviewed in the most flattering terms. The Cork Southern Reporter designates Mr Coppin ‘the most humorous of the new school of actors’ and adverts in extravagant terms to his manner of singing ‘Billy Barlow’, a song which we learn from The Tuam Herald, was sung by him 250 times in Dublin with extraordinary success. Mrs Coppin is described as a pleasing and fascinating actress …’

Left: Playbill for The Stranger and Loan of a Lover, Royal Victoria Theatre, 18 March 1843. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne. Right: Interior of the Royal Victoria Theatre, drawn by Joseph Fowler in 1848.

In 1840s depression-strapped Sydney, there was little publicity for the happenings in theatre apart from the brief notices in the newspapers. To build further momentum, and making use of his all-rounded skills, Coppin took it upon himself to draw up playbills to be printed at the Atlas Printing Office in George Street. He also notified everyone and anyone, including licensees of Sydney’s hotels and public houses, and sailors they had met on the Templar.

On Saturday 18 March, just over a week after their arrival in Sydney, the ‘first appearance of Mr and Mrs Coppin’ occurred on the stage of the Royal Victoria Theatre. The evening began with the drama billed as ‘the deeply interesting play’ of The Stranger, where Maria played the role of Mrs Haller. The evening concluded with the farce The Loan of a Lover with George as Peter Spike and Maria as Gertrude.

On Monday, 20 March, the Sydney Morning Heraldcast their judgement on the first Sydney appearance of the Coppins as ‘well received’.¹² They went on to say ‘Mrs Coppin is evidently an old stager: her appearance and voice are both good, and she made a decided hit in the character of Mrs Haller. She will be a great acquisition to the theatre.’ Their opinion of Mr Coppin was decidedly more reserved, stating, ‘Mr Coppin appears to have a considerable share of humour, but we must defer any decisive opinion until he has appeared in another character.’

Likewise, the review in The Australian heaped praise upon Mrs Coppin’s ‘simple and affecting performance, pervaded throughout by an earnest expression of womanly feeling’¹³ in The Stranger, and lauded her versatility of also playing comedy in The Loan of a Lover, which it called ‘an amusing trifle’. Again, of Mr Coppin they were more guarded, reporting ‘We shall reserve for another occasion our remarks on this performance, which our space will only allow us to say, was perfectly successful.’

All in all, the Coppins were a success in Sydney. Over the course of their four-week season at the Royal Victoria Theatre they benefitted financially from their profit-sharing deal with Wyatt and Knight, more so than if they had been paid a salary. The fortunes of the Royal Victoria Theatre also improved considerably.

As the season progressed, the Coppins performed in a variety of productions. Both appeared in the romantic drama The Lady of Lyons and the comedies The King’s Gardener; or, Nipped in the Bud, and ‘a farce written expressly for Mrs Coppin’ The Four Sisters. Additionally, Maria played in the drama Somnambulist. George also performed in the farce The Illustrious Stranger, as well as playing the comedic The Wandering Minstrel’s Visit to Sydney, performing the character of itinerant fiddler Jem Bags, which he had played previously and now adapted to Sydney.

Interior of the Royal Victoria Theatre, August 1844.  The drawing is of Sydney’s first Mayoral Ball. From Theatre Buildings in Australia to 1905 (1971) by Ross Thorne, vol 1, plate 31.

When ‘new comedietta’ The Young Kingset in the 13th century about King Philip IV of France and King of Navarre through his wife Queen Joan I of Navarre, debuted on 8 April, finally there was praise from The Australian, who had beforehand settled on a distaste for Coppin’s low comedic skills. Bagot argues that co-owner Reverend Wickham M. Hesketh was particularly loathing of humour that was not ‘refined’.¹⁴ While noting in the past of Mr Coppin ‘we regretted to observe a tendency to the vulgar’, they were finally glad ‘We can truly say that a more whimsical effort than Mr Coppin’s personation of the corporate paragon, The Mayor of Navarre, we have seldom witnessed.’¹⁵

The season drew to an end with a farewell benefit to the Coppins before a crowded house at the Royal Victoria Theatre on Thursday 13 April. It was advertised as ‘their last appearance but two in this colony’. Mrs Coppin demonstrated her versatility once again by performing in James Sheridan Knowles’ historical tragedy The Wife: A Tale of Mantua and in the vaudeville The Ladies Club. Mr Coppin performed his old favourite character ‘that eccentric, peculiar and local cosmopolitan, Billy Barlow’.¹⁶ Billy Barlow was a folk song that could be adapted to contemporary settings, locations and events. And so, Coppin adapted it to the Australian setting much to the delight of the audience.¹⁷

The last performance by the Coppins for the season was on Tuesday 18 April, with the season proper closing two days later. However, the Coppins returned for Mr Knight’s retirement farewell benefit on 24 April. They performed in the comedy The Love Chase by James Sheridan Knowles, and the farce Catching an Heiress by Charles Selby. Mr Coppin also performed ‘an entire new version of Billy Barlow’.¹⁸

Billy Barlow’s Visit to Sydney... as sung by Mr. Coppin at the Royal Victoria Theatre,Thomas Rolfe, Sydney, 1843

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

There followed much speculation abound whether the Coppins would stay in Sydney. The Australian reported ‘we are in hopes their engagement will be renewed by the management for the ensuing season’.¹⁹ And another possibility emerged—a new Sydney theatre was to open by proprietor Joseph Simmons. The Royal City Theatre was touted to rival Wyatt’s theatre monopoly in Sydney, and Simmons had begun poaching talent from the Royal Victoria Theatre.

In an attempt to upstage the opening of the new theatre, the Winter season of the Royal Victoria Theatre was pushed forward to 15 May 1843. There were other changes before the opening—renovations and improvements such as private boxes, an enlargement of the stage, and redecoration of the theatre²⁰ in the ‘Parisian style’²¹ by Andrew Torning, an interior decorator and actor at the theatre. Audiences were also given notice that ‘In order to meet the depression of the times, the Proprietor has determined on Reducing the Prices of admission’.²² Following Knight’s announcement of retirement from active managing, previous manager John Lazar was engaged as actor-manager. And it was announced that the Coppins were returning for the season!

The Royal City Theatre opened in Market Street on 20 May 1843. In the end this new theatre was not to last long. However, before it closed it certainly ruffled feathers. The situation meant that between both theatres around 3,000 seats were to be filled nearly every night. Coppin thought of having two theatres in Sydney open every evening for six nights a week—‘It is absurd to suppose that the population of Sydney can supply twelve audiences a week’.²³ Sydney in the 1840s was a fledgling population. In 1840, the non-Indigenous population of the New South Wales colony, which was the entire east coast at that time, was recorded as 127,000 people, and of that 45,000 people were living in Sydney.

The Winter season at the Royal Victoria Theatre continued through to October and gradually succeeded in attracting more audiences than the Royal City Theatre. The Coppins played many of the same pieces as the previous season, with the addition of performances such as Mrs Coppin as Portia in The Merchant of Venice;comedy Winning a Husband; or, Seven’s the Main(in which Mrs Coppin played eight different characters!); musical burletta One Hour; or, The Carnival Ball(featuring a stage with views of Naples and 200 transparent lamps); and Mr Coppin in the burletta The King and the Comedianabout Frederick the Great of Prussia. Continuing his character-based popular comedy, Coppin also played the character Paul Pry.

Playbills for the Royal Victoria Theatre, September 1843. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

Coppin and Lazar clashed over who would play Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal, as according to Bagot, Coppin was keen to prove his straight comedy ability and told Lazar ‘If you want my wife as Lady Teazle, I shall play Sir Peter.’²⁴

On 18 September, a spectacular was staged for the benefit of actor Mr Grove. The Flying Dutchman, or, The Phantom Ship was billed as a nautical and romantic drama, featuring Mr Coppin as ‘cockney dutchman’ Peter Von Bummel, and an end of Act II where ‘The House suddenly observed to be in Total Darkness; the Storm rages, and the PHANTOM SHIP APPEARS (a la Phantasmagoria)’.

Despite these successes, the small nature of Sydney and fickleness of popularity may have led Coppin to feel the need to diversify his investments. He was also well aware of his image as a ‘low comedian’. Although they endured a rival theatre and drew crowds despite the ongoing financial depression, it was a surprise when Coppin announced that he would leave the stage and purchase the lease to the Clown Tavern, situated almost directly opposite the Royal Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street. On the 17 August 1843, the Sydney Morning Herald reported from the petty sessions held at the Police Office, where among the publican licence transfers that took place was ‘Dind, of the Clown, Pitt street, to Coppin’.²⁵

Pitt Street from King to Market Streets Sydney, 1848. The Royal Victoria Theatre is pictured on the first row, with the former Clown Hotel directly opposite. Archives & History Resources, City of Sydney.

On 26 August, a notice appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald where ‘Mr G. Coppin, of the Victoria Theatre, begs leave to appraise the gentlemen of Sydney, and the public in general’²⁶ of his commencement of business as a Licensed Victualler at the Clown Hotel. The entry continued that ‘the business will be conducted in the genuine London style…’. A billiard table had been specially imported from London.

Meanwhile, at the Royal Victoria Theatre, a farewell benefit was held on 12 October for Mrs Coppin before her ‘retirement from the stage’. The King and the Comedian and Ladies at Homewere performed, as well as Mrs Coppin as the title character in the domestic drama The Orphan of Waterloo. Also featured was the ‘new local Australian extravaganza’ of the Barlow Family, featuring a family chorus including ten Barlow children.²⁷

Then on 26 October 1843, just over six months since his arrival in Australia, George Coppin took his farewell benefit that evening at the Royal Victoria Theatre. The piece performed was Sam Weller, or, The Pickwickians, an 1837 comedic adaptation of Dicken’s The Pickwick Papers. Mr Coppin finished by singing a Maitland version of Billy Barlow. The 28 October was the final night before their ‘retirement’.

On 4 November, a notice appeared in The Australianby Mr and Mrs Coppin, ‘late of the Victoria Theatre’,²⁸ thanking the public for attendance at their farewell, and advertising their new venture, the Clown Hotel, which boasted a 40-feet long saloon available for ‘public or private Dinner Parties, Balls, Clubs, Societies, or Public Meetings’, a billiard room, a commercial room, a bar and a parlour.

Coppin of course envisioned entertainment at the Clown. He initially established a ‘Free and Easy’ in the Saloon every Monday and Saturday evening, a precursor to music halls. By January 1844, he had added Thursday nights as well, with Mr Phillmore playing the pianoforte and various singers entertaining, presumably including Coppin himself, and singing commencing from 8pm. He also established a Catch Club every Tuesday night. Maria was happy to have her name associated with the Clown, but was reluctant to become a tavern entertainer.²⁹

Sydney Morning Herald, 11 April 1844, p.3

It was not to be a success, despite Coppin’s efforts. He had bought The Clown in August 1843, but by March the next year he was looking to get out of the hotel business. In a notice in the Sydney Morning Herald on 23 March, he ‘most respectfully informs Publicans and others, that having made arrangements to embrace the theatrical profession again, he is determined to sell his interest, lease, and property’³⁰ in the Clown Hotel.

Perhaps there were simply too many hotels in Sydney. Even on the small strip of Pitt Street between King and Market Streets, there were three hotels on one side, four on the other, as well as two hotels each side of the Royal Victoria Theatre entrance (being The Victoria and the Garrick’s Head). Finally on 25 September 1844, Coppin’s Clown Hotel was advertised for sale. Coppin was to own the Clown for just over a year. Unfortunately, the venture ultimately failed. ‘I went into the hotel line, and only succeeded in losing my money’,³¹he lamented.

In July of 1844, Mr and Mrs Coppin had advertised their theatrical wardrobe for sale. The sale or loan was offered to interested buyers for ‘any character they can name’.³² Further advertisements specified that ‘500 fancy dresses’ were available, consisting of European, Indian nobles and peasants costumes, ‘ancient and modern’ English court dresses in silk velvet, embroidered satins and brocades, ‘carefully selected from all parts of the continent’.³³ Perhaps it was prematurely, because after the Clown failed, they returned once more to the stage.

On 18 November 1844, an advertisement in The Australianannounced that Mr and Mrs Coppin had been re-engaged by the Royal Victoria Theatre ‘for a limited period’.³⁴ However, it was not long before it was time for another farewell performance by the Coppins, held on Christmas Eve, 24 December. This time it was to say goodbye not to the stage, but to Sydney. The Coppins were heading to the stages of Tasmania.

The farewell consisted of the comedic Sweetheart and Wives and the farce Why Don’t She Marry; or, the Swiss Cottage.Coppin’s Billy Barlow made another appearance to farewell the Sydney audiences, billed as ‘Billy Barlow’s Farewell for ever and a day, introducing some new local verses, by Mr Coppin’.³⁵The farewell raised enough to pay off his debts.³⁶

In less than two years since they had arrived in Sydney, George Coppin’s fortunes had gone up and down. It was a pattern of bust and boom entrepreneurship that would continue throughout his career. Tasmania would contain success, and Australia would remain his home.

Endnotes

1. Commercial Journal and Advertiser, 2 July 1836, p.2

2. Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 7 July 1836, p.3

3. Philip Parsons & Victoria Chance (eds), Companion to Theatre in Australia,pp.585–586

4. Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser, 1 April 1841, p.2

5. ‘The Infant Melbourne—Coppin’s Diary’ in Hamilton Spectator, 23 September 1911, p.2

6. Order-in-Council ending transportation of convicts 22 May 1840 (UK), Museum of Australian Democracy—New South Wales documents, https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-76.html

7. History of City of Sydney council, City of Sydney, https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/history/history-city-sydney-council

8. Barrie Dyster, 'The Depression of the 1840s in New South Wales', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/essay/29/text40594, originally published 1 August 2022.

9. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 1843, p.2

10. The Australian, 15 March 1843, p.2

11. The Australian, 17 March 1843, p.2

12. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 March 1843, p.2

13. The Australian, 22 March 1843, p.2

14. Bagot, Coppin the Great, p.62

15. The Australian,12 April 1843, p.2

16. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April 1843, p.3

17. George Selth Coppin, Billy Barlow’s Visit to Sydney. Billy Barlow: The favorite comic song, as sung by Mr. Coppin at the Royal Victoria Theatre, arranged for the piano forte with the original and encore verses,Thomas Rolfe, Sydney, 1843. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/74Vvl6Qq8kx3

18. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 1843, p.3

19. The Australian, 19 April 1843, p.2

20. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 1843, p.3

21. The Sun and New South Wales Independent Press, 13 May 1843, p.3

22. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 May 1843, p.3

23. Bagot, Coppin the Great, p.78

24. Bagot, Coppin the Great, p.79

25. Sydney Morning Herald, 18 August 1843, p.3

26. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 August 1843, page 3

27. The Australian, Thursday 12 October 1843, p.3

28. The Australian, 4 November 1843, p.1

29. Bagot, Coppin the Great, p.82

30. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 March 1844, p.1

31. ‘The Infant Melbourne—Coppin’s Diary’ in Hamilton Spectator, 23 September 1911, p.2

32. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 July 1844, p.3

33. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1844, p.2

34. The Australian, 18 November 1844, p.2

35. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 December 1844, p.2

36. Bagot, Coppin the Great, p.83

References

Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great: Father of the Australian Theatre,Melbourne, 1965

Sally O'Neill, ‘Coppin, George Selth (1819–1906)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/coppin-george-selth-3260/text4935, published first in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 2025.

Philip Parsons & Victoria Chance (eds), Companion to Theatre in Australia. Currency Press in association with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, 1995

Dr Graeme Skinner, A Biographical Register of Australian Colonial Musical Personnel, University of Sydney, https://www.sydney.edu.au/paradisec/australharmony/register-C-4.php#COPPIN-George

REVIEW OF A THA EVENT by Judy Leech

In the talk entitled "Hidden Theatrical Gems Revealed"!" on Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at the State Library of Victoria, we were shown a selection of playbills, posters, photos and memorabilia from the SLV's George Selth Coppin Manuscript Collection by theatre historians Mimi Colligan and Elisabeth Kumm. These items had been in the possession of George Selth Coppin's daughter Lucy (one of his seven daughters - there were also two sons, young George and Frederick).

Elisabeth and Mimi with some items from the Coppin Collection. Photo Judy Leech

When Miss Lucy Coppin died, in 1960 at the age of 87, she had been assisting E.D.A.(Alec) Bagot in the preparation of a biography of her father. Miss Coppin left the papers to Alec Bagot providing, once the book was completed, he gave them to the Commonwealth National Library of Australia - now the National Library of Australia. Coppin the Great duly appeared in 1965. When Bagot died, three years after the book was published, his widow and son complied with Lucy Coppin's directive. After some time, most of the collection was distributed to the State Library of Victoria.

The selection shown represents just a tiny fraction of a vast collection, one containing a wealth of Australian theatre history - material that has been worked intensively and extensively by the State Library of Victoria's Joan Maslen and Shona Dewer.

Among the items displayed by Mimi and Elisabeth were:

GEORGE SELTH COPPIN 1819 - 1906

Playbills for "Coppin's Farewell" as Billy Barlow (Geelong's Theatre Royal, December 1853); Cremorne Gardens (November 1856); Dion Boucicault's "Elfie, or The Cherry Tree Inn" (July 1871) - a world premiere; "The Streets of New York" (March 1872) and Opening of the New Theatre Royal (Melbourne, September 1872).

Photographs of Madame Celine Celeste as Miami in "Green Bushes" (1867); Mr. and Mrs. Coppin in their homes in Richmond (Pine Grove) and Sorrento (The Anchorage); hand-coloured portrait of George Coppin as Sir Peter Teazle in "School for Scandal" (1845) plus a carte-de-visite of Coppin (New York, 1865);

Bland Holt, Falk Studios, SLV Pictures

JOSEPH THOMAS (BLAND) HOLT 1851 - 1942

Playbill for "The Breaking of the Drought" (1902); Posters for "The Great Rescue" (1907) and for the film "The Derby Winner"(1915), a British silent film adapted from the 1894 play by Augustus Harris, Henry Hamilton and Cecil Raleigh; Photos of his wife Florence Bland Holt (née Griffiths Anderson); vision scene settings of "The Breaking of the Drought" (1902) and photographic stills from the Franklyn Barrett film of the same name (1920); Postcards advertising 'real water effect' in the production "Never Despair" (date); Drury Lane album of scenes and photographic reference for the 1893 (London) play "A Life of Pleasure" set in England and Burma.

George Selth Coppin was born in Sussex in 1819 in a village not far from the seaside towns of Brighton and Worthing. His father was an actor, and by 1826 George too was acting, singing and playing the fiddle in England, Ireland and Scotland. In 1843 at the age of 24 he travelled to Sydney with Maria Burroughs, an actress nine years his senior - she took the name Mrs. Coppin.

They toured New South Wales and Tasmania for the next three years and in June 1845 formed a company in Launceston, moving to Melbourne for a season at the newly opened Queen's Theatre, at the corner of Queen and Little Bourke Street. The repertoire included "The School for Scandal", plus Melbourne's first performances of ballet. The following year Coppin spent some time in Adelaide. Not only involved in theatre he had interests in hotels, politics, racing, mining and freemasonry.

In 1849, after a short illness, Maria died. A period in Geelong and the Victorian Goldfields followed for George, plus a return to London, in 1853 (the Haymarket Theatre) where he engaged the tragedian Gustavus Vaughan Brooke for an Australian tour. In December 1854 he returned to Melbourne with a prefabricated iron building which became the Olympic Theatre - the "Iron Pot" - where the Comedy Theatre now stands. The year after he married Harriet Hillsden, Brooke's widowed sister-in-law. During the 1850s he ran three theatres, four hotels and the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens in Richmond. (He was a member of various legislative assemblies and councils off and on up until 1895.)

In 1854 English actor-manager Clarance Holt (originally Joseph Frederick Holt), at the suggestion of George Coppin, came to Melbourne with his first wife Marie (nee Brown). He played in Geelong, Hobart and Launceston, Sydney, the Victorian Goldfields and New Zealand. In 1858 he returned to Melbourne with his family, including his seven year old son Joseph Thomas (later, known as Bland) Holt. Holt senior leased theatres in Victoria and New Zealand (his son received his education in both these places), but in 1864 he returned to England.

Poster, SLV MS 882Two years after the death of his wife Harriet, George Coppin married his eighteen year old step-daughter Lucy Hilsden. The following year, in 1862 shortly after the birth of their first child, George opened the Haymarket Theatre (and the adjoining Apollo Music Hall) in Bourke Street, Melbourne. He engaged the American actor Joseph Jefferson for the Haymarket opening. He also managed to secure English actors Charles and Ellen Kean (and in 1874, James Cassius Williamson and his wife, Maggie Moore).

In 1865 at the age of fourteen, Bland Holt was a professional actor and toured England and the United States of America for the next nine years. He settled in Australia in 1876. His father back in the UK kept in close touch and he was able to secure for his son the rights for "The New Babylon", a melodrama by Paul Merritt and George Fawcett Rowe. Bland established his own company in Sydney in 1880.

The 1880s saw George Coppin back in theatre management (although he had announced his retirement in the late 1860s - none took this seriously), he set up a lucrative copyright agency, a post-office savings bank, Victoria's St. John's Ambulance - plus Australia's very first roller-skating rink. With Bland Holt, in the 1890s, he produced several lavish pantomimes. In 1900, Daisie Coppin, his youngest daughter, appeared regularly as a danseuse at Melbourne's Bijou Theatre, under the banner of Harry Rickards.
After falling ill in March 1906 at his property in Sorrento, George returned to his home "Pine Grove" in Richmond, where he died. He was survived by his wife Lucy and their two sons and five daughters, and by two of his three daughters from his first marriage to Harriet.

Meanwhile Bland Holt had become known as the King, or Monarch, of Melodrama, and he was famed for his productions' spectacular effects - involving horses and hounds, balloon ascents, pigeons, diving feats - plus the first motor-car ever to be used on stage. He frequently starred as a comedian in these productions - which he ensured were stylish - extravagant - expensive. But they paid off!

In 1883 after the death of his first wife - stage-name Lena Edwin - Bland returned to England and stayed for almost four years. He toured sensational melodramas for Sir Augustus Harris, manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and for whom Clarance Holt was provincial agent. On Bland's return to Australia he remarried; an actress, Florence Anderson, whom he had employed in England. For the next twenty years Bland and Florence became Australia's favourite stage comedians.

Scene from  Holt's production of The Breaking of the Drought 1902, SLV MS 882

Bland Holt's company staged meticulous, opulent and spectacular comedy-melodramas and plays right up until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1909 both Bland and Florence decided to retire, following a tour of the Continent, North America and New Zealand, accompanied by private secretary Lucy, George Coppin's daughter. The Holts spent the next thirty years or so in some comfort and style in East Melbourne, Kew and at Miss Coppin's holiday home, The Anchorage in Sorrento,  Bland died in June 1942, Florence four years later. There were no children.

The style and business perspicacity of Coppin and Holt equalled that of their English or North American counterparts - they both, in their interpretation of theatre, shared more than a touch of the showman. The legacy of their ventures surpassed their artistic successes on stage and this legacy led the way for others - individuals who aspired to model themselves on these two great Australian actor-managers.

We are very grateful to Mimi Colligan and to Elisabeth Kumm for sharing their passions and their research with us, bringing these two men to our attention, reminding us of our fascinating theatrical heritage, and making us more aware of these two quite extraordinary men.

European theatre in the nineteenth century was energetically international, and there is no better representative of the adventurous performer than Anglo-Australian theatrical producer George Coppin. As Mita Chowdhury observes, it was in the eighteenth century that ‘patterns of theatrical circulation […] were analogous to the patterns of mercantilist exchange’,¹ and the early establishment of theatre in Australia—within six months of the commencement of European settlement in 1788—attests to the combination of entertainment, commerce, and entrepreneurial flair of the late eighteenth century theatre on the move. The position of theatre in Australia as a going concern, and indicator of ‘civilisation’ in this outpost of empire, was established less than 50 years later, and in this swift modernisation of colonial theatre, actor-manager George Coppin stands out. Alec Bagot called him ‘the Father of Australian theatre’, and Jim Davis reports that Coppin had ‘an especially significant impact on the development of Australian theatre in the nineteenth century’.²

Lucy and George at their holiday home The Anchorage in Sorrento, 1898. Photographer unknown. State Library Victoria, Coppin Collection, MS8827/13/PHO21.

Our knowledge of George Coppin’s life, drawn from the richness of the holdings of the Coppin Collection at the State Library of Victoria, also contributes to an understanding of Australian theatre history more generally. Through Coppin’s performances as a ‘low’ comic actor, his talents in producing large-scale theatre, his ability to nose out opportunities, and his management of the talents of other performers, Coppin’s career can stand for the extraordinary achievement of early Australian colonists. The significance of Coppin is manifold: his career symbolises the entrepreneurial energy of colonists of the first half of the nineteenth-century; his work challenges dominant literary historical accounts of nineteenth-century theatre in Australia; the materials of his archive emphasise the intertwined networks of family and professional connections; and Coppin’s writing (letters, autobiographical fragments) offer a rare and rich account of one man’s career in detail. Within sixty years of European settlement, Coppin (and others like him) established a thriving theatre industry across the distances between the colonial cities of Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney.

However, some caution might be applied here. Coppin’s presence in Australian theatre history may be, in part, due to the preservation of a large collection of his papers, both personal and professional, held by the State Library of Victoria. The Coppin Collection is a gift to the historian, as it is possible to trace the threads of Coppin’s multiple activities in some detail. We can see, for example, how he built his business and managed it. Yet the richness of this collection has the potential to distort the historical record, dazzling historians so we miss other voices, other practitioners. Eric Irvin rather sardonically comments on Bagot naming Coppin ‘Father’ of Australian theatre, apparently ‘fathering something which was in existence ten years before Coppin’s arrival in Australia’.³ When we have such detail, it is all too easy to forget the other voices in the headlong development of the Australian theatre industry.

However, if we see Coppin’s career as representative rather than directive, it can challenge the orthodox narrative of the establishment of the Australian theatre. For too long, theatre history focused on the radical nationalist playwrights and theatres of the twentieth century, largely ignoring the strong and fiercely independent commercial theatre of the nineteenth century. This early Australian theatre industry was often denigrated at the time of its making: Eric Irvin cites the drama critic of the Australasian in 1875 who complained that ‘Australian managers have not yet satisfied themselves there are any Australian dramatists’.⁴ This dismissal was compounded in later literary history, particularly in the establishment of Australian Studies and the serious study of Australian literature in the academy. Nineteenth century theatre was routinely overlooked, for example, in H.M. Green’s 1961 magisterial History of Australian Literature, Pure and Applied. Green mentions only about a dozen literary, and mostly unperformed, dramas of the first half of the nineteenth-century, judging them to be ‘extremely dull, reflecting the stunted imagination, the fossilized conventions, and the cheap sentimental melodrama of the contemporary English stage’.⁵ Green asserts that Australian drama ‘in the sense of drama arising out of Australian conditions’ was founded in the period of self-conscious nationalism from 1890 (p. 736). This literary viewpoint has distorted our understanding of the colonial theatre, and—more importantly—our understanding of colonial society more broadly. As Richard Fotheringham argues, the commercial theatre was an important way in which colonists created their identity as cosmopolitan modern citizens.⁶ In this respect, theatre in the new colonies was not just a form of entertainment, but a means by which colonists performed identities as active participants and creators in the formation of Australian culture, not simply as passive consumers. Veronica Kelly goes further, to argue that the ‘Australasian modernity’ of the nineteenth-century colonial entertainment industry ‘laid the foundations for twentieth-century global entertainment’.⁷

The story of Coppin’s life and his role in developing the Australian commercial theatre industry has been told several times.⁸ What I want to look at in this essay is the way in which Coppin’s family, and especially his third wife, Lucy Coppin, were active in the web of Coppin’s private and professional activities, and how Lucy Coppin facilitated his entrepreneurial activities. Lucy Coppin’s daughter, also Lucy, continued this work of behind-the-scenes organisation and management for her father and his successor, Bland Holt. What is significant here is that the Coppin Collection shows how much the Coppin-Holt business network was also a family network. But it was one in which women were largely invisible in its public manifestations, except as performers. Jacky Bratton has pointed out the ways in which theatre management in the nineteenth century was a family business:

The tracing of families as engines of induction, training and inheritance within the profession, and the exploring of the internal, sometimes hidden, power structures that reveals, brings into focus the historical contribution of women to theatre.⁹

To Bratton’s list of women’s activities, we might add Lucy Coppin’s stable presence at home as administrator, comforter, and emotional centre for Coppin. His letters home to Lucy reveal just how important his self-image as a hard-working family man was to him, and to his endeavours in business and public life.

Blanche and Amy, Lucy and George’s eldest children; and Lucy with Constance, c.1865. State Library Victoria, Coppin Collection, MS8827/13/PHO9.

George Coppin’s marital and familial history was not simple. Lucy Coppin was his third wife (or possibly his second lawful wife). She was the daughter of his second wife, Harriet Hilsden, by her first husband, Hilsdon, a master mariner.¹⁰ Coppin’s first domestic partnership started in 1842, with Maria Watkins Burroughs, an actress whom he met when working in Dublin. The Australian Dictionary of National Biography describes them as living together; Elisabeth Kumm and Mimi Colligan note that Maria ‘called herself Mrs. Coppin,’ and Bagot notes the union as de facto in the Coppin lineage he publishes.¹¹ Of course, this kind of pragmatic partnership was not unusual: the theatre was a family business, and both partners were likely to fare better than as a single person. The Coppins certainly demonstrated this in their decision—on the toss of a coin—to seek their fortunes together as emigrants to Sydney in 1843. Maria died suddenly in Adelaide in 1848, leaving Coppin alone, and prone to get into romantic scrapes. Coppin’s second marriage in 1855 was to Harriet Hilsden, the sister of G.V. Brooke’s wife, Marianne. Coppin had managed and produced Brooke’s extended tour of Australia, and had satisfied Mrs Brooke’s request to see if he could help her recently widowed sister, Harriet Hilsden, in Sydney. On their marriage, Coppin took on the care of Harriet’s four children (including Lucy Hilsden); eventually Harriet had three more children with Coppin. Harriet died shortly after the birth of her youngest child, Amy, in 1859, leaving her daughter Lucy at age 18 to manage the large family. Of Lucy Hilsden, Bagot writes rather fulsomely and in terms which feel uncomfortable sixty years later:

Lucy was quite capable of taking charge. She slipped into her new position quietly and efficiently, like a well-rehearsed understudy assuming the leading lady’s part at a minute’s notice. Lucy in this emergency proved herself so competent that she evoked his admiration as well as gratitude. Satisfied, he left the reins of household management in her firm young hands, turning himself again to his many public and business interests.¹²

In May 1861, Coppin married Lucy, who was then 20. The Australian Dictionary of National Biography notes that Lucy’s first child was born on 5 January 1862. Lucy had seven children in total, and the sixth child (also a Lucy) was to stay working within the family business as Bland Holt’s secretary.

Marriage for Coppin seems to have offered an anchoring in a domestic emotional life, which enabled him to work more productively in his professional life. A kind of pragmatism emerges from this bare account of his marriages and family arrangements, and the sensibilities of 2025 might well question the familial sexual politics of Coppin’s marriages: first to his business partner’s sister-in-law, and then to her daughter. Our sensitivities to coercion and abuse within families are more sharp and troubled now than in colonial Victorian life, when the stability of family could shore up precarity in business. And the theatre was always a precarious business.

Lucy Coppin, c.1870. Photo by Johnstone, O'Shannessy & Co., Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Coppin collection, MS8827/13/PHO230

Coppin with Lucy’s brother Frank, c.1870. Photo by Richards & Co., Ballarat.

State Library Victoria, Coppin collection, MS8827/13/PHO221

The twin threads of Coppin’s life—his precarious business and desire for a stable domestic life—are certainly recurring themes in his letters home. Coppin’s letters to Lucy comprise a significant part of the Coppin Collection family papers. These letters show the ways in which Lucy Coppin was involved in the family business in an invisible, but important way. All mails came to her, as the stable point in Coppin’s busy touring life. She is regularly instructed by Coppin to pay bills, tender cheques, and organise or otherwise administer aspects of the business from their family homes in Sorrento and Pine Grove, in Richmond (just outside of the central business district of Melbourne). Lucy is clearly also an emotional lynch-pin for George Coppin, who writes regularly about being lonely, and of missing her and their children. Coppin’s letters to Lucy are a curious mix of emotional neediness, often castigating her for not writing, combined with clear and precise commands for Lucy to attend to matters of business for him, or send him scripts, or manage actors and other employees. When touring in the Hunter Valley (inland from the Australian town of Newcastle), Coppin writes from Maitland:

I have received letters from several English friends asking me to advise against Miss Helen Fleming. I wrote to Mr. Simmonds to engage her and if she is unsuccessful there I sent her an order for passage to New Zealand. I require actresses and she would be useful. If she calls upon you make her welcome and if you like her invite her to visit you. She must be very lonely poor thing in a strange country.

Lucy’s role here in exercising domestic hospitality looks like it is also part of Coppin’s business strategy: Lucy is to help with ensuring Coppin’s touring actors are cared for so that they may perform well, and bring him more profit. He finishes the letter with instructions:

I shall require the manuscript of Janet Pride, The Overland Route with parts and many other books that you will find upon the shelves.¹³

Lucy was cast in the role of both office clerk and kind hostess. Coppin writes in the certainty that she will manage both the family and the business—she will know where his scripts are, and she will mother actors who may be useful for the business.

In another letter home (dated from the York Hotel, Adelaide, 3 May 1868) Coppin requests that Lucy attend church as an example to their children:

I hope that before our children are old enough to understand our neglect that fortune will enable me to settle down without the anxieties of business and to do my duty by them in setting an example that will bring them up as true and religious christians [sic].

After more family matters, Coppin goes on to discuss business, and his step-son Charley’s behaviour (Charley is also Lucy’s brother) in the family business:

You do not say anything in your letter about Charley having paid the money into the Oriental Bank. Tell him to give the manuscript of the Streets of Melbourne to Mr. Bellair. [...] If Charlwood has a wood cut of the Pilot let him send 50. I also want the book of The Pilot out of my lot, also the books of Mrs. Burberry and the parts if I have them.

From Ballarat and the gold mines there, Coppin writes:

I shall sell when I can get a profit upon my shares. I cannot get him to complete the settlement upon his family. I spoke to Mr. Walsh upon the subject and he will assist me. If a mine or two in which he holds shares turn out well I do not think we shall have any difficulty upon the subject but it must be done before the Melbourne Cup comes off or Mr. Walsh things [sic] he will loose [sic] all his money. This day week will bring me nearer home. Altho’ I am as comfortable as it is possible to be away from you all it is very miserable to be separated from you and the children.¹⁴

Writing from Adelaide, where Coppin was trying to set up a theatrical venture, his letters express the same mix of emotion and business.

It is distressing after working so hard for so many years that I have not got enough to keep my wife and children in respectability without leaving home to seek my fortune and it is heartbreaking to meet with such serious losses instead of a remunerative return for the misery I feel at separation.¹⁵

and

there is quite a gloom over Adelaide in consequence of the failure in the crops and I do not feel that I shall have a good season. It will be very hard luck to have the misery of being separated from Wife, children and home and to loose [sic] money into the bargain. It is a splendid Hall and will make a nice Theatre but I fear it will cost too much to pay. Tell Charley to send 50 Posters of Milky White and 50 of Paul Pry by Mr. Cobb. To have them printed at once that they may dry.¹⁶

The jump from heartfelt ‘misery,’ to speculation about the ‘splendid Hall’ as a likely theatre, concluding with the peremptory command to ‘tell Charley’, suggest that Coppin sees his wife as a loving confidante and a business partner. While Coppin is away from home, it is Lucy who organises his scripts, bills, and oversees employees and matters with business associates. She does this while remaining the private and domestic mother of seven, living in houses outside of the central business and entertainment districts of Melbourne.

The tension expressed in Coppin’s letters home to Lucy throughout their marriage—his need to make money and his desire to stay at home with his family—is most acute in the trip to America. In his preparations for travel to America in 1864 with Charles and Ellen Kean, whose tour of Australia he had managed, Coppin writes at length about his separation from family:

if I had known of the misery and privations I should have made myself contented by the side of my darling Wife and children, enjoying the comforts of my happy home and confined my exertions to the Colonies to have you well provided for when it pleases god to take me from you.¹⁷

This very long letter to Lucy describes in detail the travelling conditions on the sea voyage from Sydney to San Francisco with the Keans. The detail is fascinating and is a reminder of the adversity and discomfort which were the cost of nineteenth-century mobility. This mobility was all the more remarkable because its purpose was to entertain others—for profit, of course. And the possibility of making a lot of money in America, on tour with the Keans, the international stars of the day, was irresistible. Coppin’s descriptions of Kean suggest the costs of that ambition, however. To Lucy he writes that Charles Kean is ‘Selfish, dictatorial very bad tempered and offensive’.¹⁸ John Ripley provides the other half of that relationship, citing Kean’s views of Coppin, also recorded in a letter home to his daughter, Mary:

I am disgusted with Mr. Coppin my Agent. He is a coarse vulgar brute, & as far as this country is concerned perfectly incompetant [sic]. There is only one thing he is always ready to do & in which he is punctual to the moment—taking his share of my profits.¹⁹

Kean’s renowned ‘gentlemanly’ snobbishness and George Coppin’s new world entrepreneurialism were bound to clash, although the year-long tour satisfied Coppin’s desire for financial stability.

George Coppin’s children in c.1880: George (aged 14), Daisie (aged 5), Frederick (aged 11), Emma (aged 9), and Lucy (aged 7). Photo by Stewart & Co., Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Coppin collection, MS8827/13/ PHO245

Lucy Coppin, c.1880. Photo by Stewart & Co., Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Coppin collection, MS8827/13/ PHO231

Unfortunately, the Coppin Collection does not hold many traces of Lucy Coppin’s words or thoughts; she is a mostly silent presence in the archive. She was not a performer, but organised Coppin’s business and family life, and her presence as a lynchpin in Coppin’s career is worth remembering. While a domestic, private woman, she undertook many of the tasks required of a ‘confidential secretary’ (usually a man’s job in the nineteenth-century), as well as acting as Coppin’s proxy when he was away from Melbourne. She also seems to have been his emotional centre. Coppin may well have been a success without his wife, but it is difficult to escape the sense that her steady matriarchal presence, in their mansion in Richmond, or their seaside holiday home in Sorrento, was the necessary anchor for Coppin’s energy and mobility. He could range around the world, making his fortune, secure in the knowledge of a domestic sanctuary at the end of his journey.

Endnotes

1. Mita Choudhury, ‘Circulation: Emergent Modalities of Intercultural Performance,’ in Mechele Leon (ed), A Cultural History of Theatre in the Age of Enlightenment, Vol. 4, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017, p. 97.

2. Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great: Father of Australian theatre,Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1965, and Jim Davis, ‘Actor Migration to and from Britain in the Nineteenth Century,’ in Yana Meerzon and S.E. Wilmer (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration,Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, p. 689.

3. Eric Irvin, Theatre Comes to Australia, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 1971, p. 228.

4. Cited in Eric Irvin, Australian Melodrama; Eighty years of popular theatre, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1981, p. ix.

5. H.M. Green, History of Australian Literature, Pure and Applied, Vol. I, Angus and Robertson, 1961, p. 127.

6. Richard Fotheringham (ed.), Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage 1834–1899, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2006, p. xxvii.

7. Veronica Kelly, The Empire Actors: Stars of Australasian costume drama, 1890s–1920s, Currency House, Sydney, 2009, p. 1.

8. As well as Simon Plant, Entertaining Mr Coppin (due August 2025) and Bagot, Coppin the Great. See also: Eric Irvin, Theatre Comes to Australia, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1971, and Harold Love (ed.), The Australian Stage: A documentary history, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1984.

9. Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 178.

10. Bagot, Coppin the Great, pp. 185–6. He notes how the spelling of ‘Hillsdon’ changed to ‘Hilsden’, perhaps typical of the shape-shifting of Australian colonial life in the nineteenth-century.

11. Judy Leech, ‘George Coppin & Bland Holt,’ https://theatreheritage.org.au/on-stage-magazine/gallery/item/197-george-coppin-and-bland-holt and Bagot, pp. 348–9.

12. Bagot, p. 226.

13. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 73. June 16, 1863, Maitland.

14. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 78. August 1866.

15. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 78. ‘Sunday morning’ Adelaide, [1868?].

16. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 78. York Hotel, Adelaide 16th February 1867.

17. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 73. August 17th, 1864.

18. Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, MS 8827, Box 73. August 17th, 1864.

19. John Ripley, ‘“We are not in little England now”: Charles and Ellen Kean in Civil-War America’, Theatre Notebook, Vol. 61, No. 2, 2007, pp. 77–106.

‘A spirit of inquiry is the greatest characteristic of the age we live in.’ – Paul Pry

As a low comedian, George Coppin (1819–1906) was able to get under the skin of his characters and present a life-like representation of the many scoundrels, dodgers, and simpletons that he performed during his long career on the colonial stage. Of these characters, Paul Pry, the titular role in John Poole’s 1825 comedy, stands out as one Coppin’s greatest and most popular creations, from his arrival in Sydney in 1843 to his final retirement from the stage in the early 1880s.

For forty years, Coppin was identified with the role in Australia, and the longevity of the piece was entirely due to his skilful interpretation of the village busybody. From the 1850s, the impromptu curtain speeches at the end of the play became something of an institution, affording Coppin as his alter ego, Pry, the opportunity to satirically comment on current affairs.

When John Poole’s three act comedy Paul Pry was given its first performance at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London on 13 September 1825, it became an instant hit for actor John Liston.¹ As Paul Pry, the chronic meddler, who sticks his nose into everybody’s affairs, Liston’s creation was an immense success, spawning numerous sequels² and beginning a lucrative Paul Pry industry of memorabilia and advertising.³

Like the Trilby⁴ phenomenon sixty years later, there were soon taverns, racehorses, schooners and newspapers named after Poole’s eponymous character. In addition, the proliferation of etchings, figurines and tableware, depicting Liston’s image as Paul Pry, dressed in tailcoat, striped pantaloons, high boots, top hat, and foppish cravat, holding a furled umbrella, ensured that Liston’s depiction of the character remained the standard, at least in dress, for nearly 100 years.

Hand coloured etching depicting John Liston in the character of Paul Pry, published by B. Webster, London, 1825

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Polychromed glazed ceramic figurine of John Liston as Paul Pry, Staffordshire, c.1840—one of many decorative items produced to tap into the Pry memorabilia industry

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Liston continued to revive the character intermittently over the following decade. However, other comedians played the role from the 1830s, with varied success, their performances invariably being compared to that of Liston’s.

Pry’s umbrella played a key role in the play. He was constantly leaving it behind—a ploy that afforded him the opportunity to return unexpectedly. His phrase ‘I hope I don’t intrude’ became his calling card, providing huge merriment for audiences. And at the end of the play, after the fall of the curtain, Liston would return, in search of his lost umbrella, the cue for an ‘off the cuff’ curtain speech, usually thanking the audience for coming and inviting them to the following night’s performance.

America’s first Paul Pry—Thomas Hilson. Lithograph by M. Williams, after a sketch by Mr Parisen, c.1826

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

J.L. Toole was one of the most popular delineators of Paul Pry in England during the late 1800s. In 1890 he played the role on tour in Australia.

Photo by Falk, Sydney, Theatre Heritage Australia

In England, notable Prys included John Reeve, John Pritt Harley, David Rees, Edward Wright, J.L. Toole, John Sleeper Clake, Lionel Brough and Edward Terry.⁵

The play also enjoyed considerable success in America and Australia. Though there were numerous outstanding Prys in America—Thomas Hilson, James H. Hackett. William E. Burton, William Warren and John Brougham⁶—in Australia, there was just one—George Coppin.

In Australia, the comedy had been performed a handful of times during the 1830s—notably by Joseph Simmons in 1835⁷—but it was not until September 1843, when George Coppin played the role for the first time in Sydney, that the character established itself as a popular favourite with audiences. By the end of the decade theatregoers in Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria also had the chance to see Coppin in the role.

Playbill for Theatre, Bridlington Quay, 15 September 1827

Coppin collection, Series 11: Playbills and programmes, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Playbill for Theatre, Aylsham, 25 September 1829

Coppin collection, Series 11: Playbills and programmes, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Coppin’s connection with the play can be traced back to 1827, when he and his family were members of Joseph Smedley’s Yorkshire-based touring company. The Coppin Collection at the State Library Victoria (SLV) has playbills showing Paul Pry being performed at Bridlington-Quay on 15 September 1827 and at Driffield on 8 October 1827, featuring Joseph Smedley as Pry with Coppin’s parents in supporting roles.⁸ An earlier advertised performance at the new theatre at Sleaford on 18 April 1827 also had members of Smedley’s company performing the play.⁹

By the close of 1827, the Coppin family had parted with Smedley and joined Ted Crook’s Sunderland company. Though no performances of Paul Pry seem to have been given at this time, Crook’s enthusiasm for employing ‘star’ actors, meant that Coppin and his family had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest actors of the era, from Madame Vestris and Ellen Tree to William Macready, Henry Kemble and John Pritt Harley. A connection with Paul Pry may be made with Madame Vestris and John Harley. Vestris performed in the original Haymarket production, playing the character Phoebe (the lady’s maid) and introducing the popular song ‘Cherry Ripe’; while the low comedian John Harley, who had also been a member of Liston’s company in 1825, would go on to perform Pry at the Haymarket on 20 June 1831 and on tour.

Due to the nonpayment of wages, the Coppin family left Crook’s company after a year, with Coppin Senior making the decision to go into management for himself. Over the next five years, the Coppin family formed their own circuit company, touring the market towns of Thorley, Holbeach, Holt, Aylsham and Wymondham, with a large repertoire of comedies and farces, including Paul Pry.

Playbills in the SLV Coppin Collection record performances of Paul Pry at Aylsham in 1829 and Holt in 1831. At Aylsham, it was performed for the Benefit of Miss Foster and Mrs Church on 29 September 1829, along with Sweethearts and Wives, with the role of Pry played by Coppin Senior. At the Theatre, Holt, on 16 April 1831, Mr Lockwood played the title role, with Coppin Senior as Grasp, and Coppin’s sister Emma as Eliza.

Playbill for the Benefit of Mr. G.S. Coppin at the Theatre, Nottingham, 25 January 1841

Coppin collection, Series 11: Playbills and programmes, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Curiously there is no playbill at the SLV recording Coppin’s first appearance as Pry, but as Coppin later recalled in his unpublished memoirs, ‘My father obtained a copy and drilled me well into the part which continued to remain my leading and most successful character from the time I was ten years old up to my farewell of the stage on 19th December 1881.’¹⁰ Though Coppin’s early performances as Pry are not documented, it is certain that he did play the role in 1841, at his Benefit at The Theatre, Nottingham, earning a good review.¹¹

During his time with the family company, Coppin would have become fluent in all the key farces of the day, observing his father in many of the signature low comedy roles, and having the opportunity to play some of them himself. As he remembered:

It was fortunate we had received exceptional instruction and experience in a company that strictly carried out the original business of each production. I was capable of doing everything connected with the Theatre, including its fitting up in each town, cleaning the lamps, delivering the bills, prompt, stage manage, lead the orchestra and play second low comedy parts.¹²

Coppin was meant to be a low comedian. His general appearance, which was short and stout, with pliable facial features, determined the type of character he would perform. A fast learner, his early training assured that his delivery and timing was spot on. He could sing, dance and play the fiddle, and when required, perform pratfalls and tumbles with ease.

Alongside the tragedian, the low comedian was one of the most important positions in a company, playing ‘leading comic parts of a broad, farcical, or clownish type, together with minor roles in tragedy’.¹³ The main job of the low comedian was to make people laugh, and like the Elizabethan clown, from whom he is descended, a really accomplished low comedian combined humour and pathos. As a keen observer of human nature, he was able to ‘hold the mirror up to nature’ and by reflecting its virtues and vices, help people to understand themselves and their society more clearly.

Hand coloured photograph of Coppin as Paul Pry, c.1860. From a photo by Archibald McDonald.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Coppin as Paul Pry by E.C. Waddington & Co., Melbourne, The Coppin Portfolio, 1881

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

In late 1881, when Coppin commenced a round of engagements to mark his retirement from the stage, after almost forty years in Australia, a limited-edition portfolio of photographs was produced, featuring him in his most famous roles. The album of eight cabinet photographs, including one of Coppin as himself, taken by E.C. Waddington & Co., Melbourne, included the characters of Paul Pry (Paul Pry), Putzi (The Young King), Daniel White (Milky White), Crack (The Turnpike Gate), Chrysos (Pygmalion and Galatea), and Mould (Not Such a Fool as He Looks). Each role was represented by a single photo, except for Paul Pry, which had two photos.

In 1906, asked to record his impressions of Coppin, retired Age theatre critic James Smith observed:

Rarely has an actor succeeded so well in presenting the ponderous stolidity and impenetrable stupidity of certain types of humanity, which are so exasperating in real life, and which are so immensely diverting on the stage, as Mr. Coppin did. The obtuseness to ridicule, the serene self-complacency, the sublime unconsciousness of their own ignorance, obtrusive vulgarity and innate boorishness by which such persons are actuated in their intercourse with others, were portrayed with lifelike fidelity; and the voice, the gait, the movements, the expression of the actor’s features were all in perfect harmony with the mental and moral characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the person he represented, so that the man himself stood before you in living reality.¹⁴

Descriptions of Coppin’s performance as Paul Pry suggest that his approach was ‘Listonian’. It is unlikely that he would have seen Liston in action, but under his father’s strict guidance, he was drilled in the ‘original business’. He may even have had the opportunity to observe touring actors from London who played the role in the manner of Liston.

Writing at the time of Coppin’s 1881 farewell to the stage a commentator in the Weekly Times (Melbourne), signing himself ADAGIO, offered an important insight:

Those present at Saturday’s performance who are old enough to remember the London print shops of forty [sic] years ago cannot fail to recollect the coloured portraits of the celebrated Liston as Paul Pry, which at that period scarcely any printseller’s window was without. To such Mr Coppin’s first appearance on the boards was almost startling. It was the familiar Liston portrait of old, animated into life. There were the same cut-off coat, the light blue striped continuations tucked into the Wellington boots, the broad-brimmed hat, the double eye-glass, and, of course, the umbrella; and as the traditional Paul stood bowing his acknowledgments, and surveying his delighted auditory through the double eye-glass with an unctuous leer, the theatre rang again with the laughter and applauding warmth of the reception. Mr Coppin’s Paul Pry has been played too often, and is too well-known, to need detailed criticism. It will be sufficient to say that even in his prime, he never played better. Forty years ago David Rees’s¹⁵ Paul Pry, at the London Haymarket, used to be considered the nearest approach to Liston possible, but it is open to question whether Rees’s impersonation, good as it undoubtedly was, is not excelled by that of Mr. Coppin.¹⁶

It is worth quoting this passage at length as personal reminiscences are gold-dust. They demonstrate the importance, even now, of capturing eyewitness accounts of actors and theatregoers, so that future generations may better understand the methods and motivations of performers of the past.

During the nineteenth century, key characters in the low comedy repertoire followed certain conventions, and for the most part they adhered to the prescribed make up and costume cues established by a role’s creator. Many of the principal low comedy roles date from the Restoration period through to the first half of the nineteenth century. From the comedies of Sheridan (The Rivals and The School for Scandal) and Goldsmith (She Stoops to Conquer) to those of Isaac Bickerstaffe (The Hypocrite), Thomas Morton (The School for Reform), James Kenney (Raising the Wind and Sweethearts and Wives) and Thomas Mayhew (The Wandering Minstrel), low comedians were often instrumental in ensuring a play’s success.

Portrait of John Liston as Paul Pry, engraved by G. Adcock, frontispiece to Paul Pry, published by Duncombe & Co., London, 1825. No author is given, but it is the Douglas Jerrold play.

Google Books

Title page of Paul Pry by John Poole, published by John Dicks’, London, c.1880, featuring a scene from Act 2, Scene 1, when Pry bursts in unannounced on Witherton and Mrs Subtle.

Internet Archive

Just as etchings and lithographs (and later photographs) of actors in costume provide historians with clues about dress and staging, actors could use these character portraits to inform their interpretation. Printed playscripts also provide detailed lists of costumes and props, in addition to the words, stage directions, and stage business.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact publication date of John Poole’s play text. Many contemporary sources list J. Duncombe & Co.’s 1825 London edition of Paul Pry as the first. No author is given, and although the frontispiece features a portrait of Liston as Pry, closer scrutiny shows that it is not Poole’s play, but one written by Douglas Jerrold!¹⁷

There were several editions of Poole’s Paul Pry published in New York: E.M. Morden in 1827,¹⁸ Edwin B. Clayton in c.1833¹⁹  and Samuel French (French’s Standard Drama, No. 76) in the 1850s.²⁰ It seems to have entered the catalogues of the London-based publishers T.H. Lacy’s (Lacy’s Acting Edition, No. 222)²¹ and Dicks’ (Standard Plays, No. 321)²² in the mid-1800s.

The Coppin Collection at the SLV contains hundreds of playscripts linked to Coppin. However, apart from a copy of the Charles Mathews’ play Paul Pry Married and Settled (1861), there is just one copy each of Paul Pry by Poole and Jerrold. The Poole playscript dates from the 1850s and seems to be a reprint of the Samuel French edition by Wm. Taylor and Co. in New York, possibly belonging to actor William Andrews (1836–1878), whose name and annotations appear throughout.²³

The importance of stage tradition, especially regarding low comedy roles was crucial, not only for the actor, but also the critics and the playgoing public. By the 1870s, some critics lamented the skills of present-day actors, as noted by JAQUES (pseudonym of Melbourne-based theatre critic James Edward Nield) in the Australasian in September 1870:

Mr Coppin, like all the members of that excellent old comedy school to which he belongs, is very careful attending to the necessities of make-up in whatever part he appears, and I may incidentally regret that this branch of the art of acting is so much neglected among younger actors, who appear to rely too much upon what I presume they regard as their power of facial mobility … The face requires putting into costume just as the body does … Fancy, for example, Paul Pry with a moustache! And yet, if some members of the Melbourne company were to play Paul Pry they would do it in a moustache!²⁴

Nield goes on to discuss Coppin’s interpretation of the character:

Mr Coppin … would regard it as unpardonable heresy to play it other than conformably with Listonian indications. … Next to having seen Liston, the best thing is to have seen Mr Coppin in it. It would be heresy to say that probably Mr Coppin’s Paul Pry is as good as Liston’s was; but if it were not heresy, I think I should say it.

Admitting that he had not seen Liston perform, Nield suggested that ‘old playgoers’ might not agree with him. Nevertheless, he asked that Coppin should be accepted on his merits, concluding with the observation that the continued popularity of Paul Pry was due to Coppin’s ‘vivid representation’.

By the 1870s John Poole’s play was beginning to be regarded as ‘old fashioned’ and ‘ill constructed’, with the antics of the central character considered the only sustaining feature.

It would also have been the case that Paul Pry’s costume, perhaps semi-fashionable in Liston’s day, comprising clothing items worn by a Regency eccentric, would by the 1840s have appeared entirely absurd. However, this predicament would not have been unique to this play but have applied to any play from the Regency period or earlier that demanded certain characters to wear prescribed outfits. Interestingly the 1850s copy of Paul Pry in the SLV Coppin Collection includes a note about the costumes:

The Costume of Paul Pry, like that of so many of the old Comedies, is generally incongruous, Colonel Hardy appearing in an old-fashioned Military Dress, and the other characters in fashionable modern costume.²⁵

A common ploy of Coppin’s, from the 1850s onwards, was to step before the curtain and deliver a speech in the manner of Paul Pry, a practice first undertaken by Liston thirty years earlier.

In May 1864, while in Sydney on tour with the English actors Charles and Ellen Kean, Coppin played a short season at the Prince of Wales Theatre, presenting a triple bill that included Paul Pry, The Wandering Minstrel and To Oblige Benson. After the first piece, he was called before the curtain, and as Pry, thanked his audience and took the opportunity to discuss a few local topics, including the railways, Mrs Kean’s illness and his own reappearance:

Ladies and gentlemen, here I am. I hope you are well; I am; and very glad to see you. I have just come up from Melbourne, before taking a final leave of the colonies. I had intended to come by rail, but found the line only completed to the Murray on the other side. Now, it strikes me you ought to push your rulers a bit, and try to meet it on that side; only mind they don’t go too fast, and burst their boilers. So I happened to meet the captain of the City of Melbourne, and he said we should have a very pleasant voyage; upon which I said ‘Walker’. So I’ll say no more about those pleasures. Of course you’ve heard the news about Mrs Kean’s illness—well, she’s been very bad indeed, but from the telegram I’ve had tonight, she’s getting better, and I do hope we shall have her amongst us before long. Twenty-one years ago Mr Coppin make his first appearance before a Sydney audience, and I’ve had my eye on him ever since. He then received the same kind of reception Old Coppin has met with to-night, and I heartily thank you for both of them, and I’ll try to deserve it during the short stay I am about to make amongst you now. Allow me to say how much I am obliged to you all, and I hope to see as many friends about me every night.²⁶

Some months later, when he was in America with the Keans, he had the opportunity to play Pry in San Francisco and in Victoria, Vancouver Island. In a letter dated 15 December 1864, he sent an account of his Victoria appearance to the Melbourne Herald:

My second night was full, but not crowded. I made them a political speech in the character of Paul Pry, pointed out a few subjects worthy of their attention, and ridiculed their procrastinations in dealing with matters of great importance. It made quite a stir in the town, and they have had meetings and songs manufactured upon the address. The enclosed extracts from the newspapers will give you an account of the affair.²⁷

The said newspaper, the Victoria Times (23 December 1864), was quoted in another daily:

Mr George Coppin has given us low comedy—but low comedy in its highest form. It is not disparagement to Victorian intelligence to say that the house was crowded to see Mr Coppin in Paul Pry and the Wandering Minstrel. The audience, which had satiated itself with Shakespeare in a most exemplary manner for more than a week, had earned the right to enjoy the broad humors of Mr Coppin. The people laughed as they never laughed before. They laughed like schoolboys who had escaped from the serious labors of the class-room. To the Australians it was a great treat to renew their acquaintance with an old friend, and to the English it was a great surprise to find that the best low comedian of the day since the death of poor [Edward] Wright was an Australian manager. At the conclusion of the first piece Mr Coppin was called before the curtain, the audience would not let him off without a speech and the result was the best joke of the evening. In his character of Paul Pry, he gave his opinion on some colonial matters in a manner which showed that the Australians knew the value of their man when they returned the comedian to the Legislative Council. He liked the colony, the climate, and the scenery; but the farmers were to raise more produce, and Assembly to do more for education, and spend less time in debating, in Paul Pry’s opinion, and he hoped he didn’t intrude, it would be better for them all. The hearty good humor with which the densely packed crowd received his genial criticism showed that they were not averse to learn something from a visitor who had so long an experience in a larger and wealthier colony.²⁸

Coppin’s habit of leaving his umbrella in front of the curtain at the end of the play, so that he may come back to collect it and address the audience became expected by theatregoers. His speeches, given in an ‘off-hand way, about things in general’ became part of the show.²⁹ As an extension of the play, it afforded the audience more time with a favourite actor, more laughter, and the possibility that he may reveal something new or controversial. Many of his curtain speeches were published in full in newspapers, so that the general public could enjoy them as well. The enthusiasm for Pry was particularly strong in 1870, as evidenced by the advertisement below, and it was perhaps Coppin’s eagerness to comply with audience demand that led to some of Pry’s less circumspect observations.

Advertisement in the Argus, 26 September 1870, p.8

Trove

During his season at the Theatre Royal in September 1870, Coppin’s Pry speeches covered a range of topics, from the new city councillors to the war in Europe. Of this first topic, Pry referred to the councillors as ‘dead heads’, suggesting that they were incompetent and only interested in the largess of office. Although the comments caused some small stir, Pry was to use the term again in late 1871, with greater consequences.

In December 1871, the Australian Dramatic, Operatic, Musical, and Equestrian Association resolved to hold a benefit, and ahead of the event, the Association, of which Coppin was the President, sent letters to numerous worthies seeking donations. Letters were received from the Archbishop of Melbourne and the Governor of Victoria (Viscount Canterbury), who both rejected the offer. The Association felt that Governor’s refusal to contribute was a slap in the face to the theatres who regularly hosted him and his suite at Command performances and the like, advising all Melbourne theatres to remove him from their free-lists.

At the Benefit on 30 December, Paul Pry made an appearance at the end of the play and the issue of ‘dead heads’ was firmly on the agenda, with the finger pointed squarely at ‘Her Majesty’s representative’ as one of the main abusers of the free list system. While the audience at the Theatre Royal laughed and applauded, others (notably the Argus) were appalled at Coppin’s lack of tact. In his defence, Coppin observed:

I took all my subjects from the daily newspapers. I said nothing but what I had read in the papers, and I think I have as much right as any pressman to criticise published remarks as Paul Pry or as George Coppin.³⁰

The press had a field-day, especially Melbourne Punch, who published a cartoon of Coppin, dressed as Pry, arm-in-arm with the Governor. Headed ‘Cheek: or George’s next dodge’, the caption below the cartoon reads:

PAUL PRY: Hope I don't intrude. Musn’t mind me, I’m a vulgar old fellow at the best of times. Take no notice of my abuse, come to the play when you like—I'll make it all right at the door.³¹

The same cartoon was also issued as a carte-de-visite, a copy of which may be found in the SLV Coppin Collection.³² Whether it was circulated by Coppin or Punch, it is not clear. Either way it helped keep the issue alive for many months to come.

CHEEK: OR GEORGE’S NEXT DODGE. Carte-de-visite featuring Coppin with Viscount Canterbury, the Governor of Victoria. Cartoon by Tom Carrington, first published in Melbourne Punch, 4 January 1872.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

This satirical advertisement in Melbourne Punch, published in response to Coppin’s Pry speech criticising the Governor of Victoria as an abuser of the free-list system or ‘dead head’. Melbourne Punch, 4 January 1872, p.3.

Trove

Coppin’s relationship with Viscount Canterbury did not improve, and when Coppin’s Theatre Royal burned to the ground in March 1872, uninsured, the Governor was not among the many well-wishers who offered support. Over the ensuing months, Coppin busied himself with the rebuilding of the Theatre Royal, and in less than a year, a magnificent new edifice rose from the ashes of the old theatre, opening on 6 November 1872.

By April 1873, Viscount Canterbury’s tenure as Governor had expired and he returned to England. But Coppin had the final word, when in December 1872, as the character of Lord Ptarmigant in the first Australian production of T.W. Robertson’s comedy Society, Coppin modelled his impersonation of the lethargic aristocratic with a penchant for snoozing on the outgoing Governor.³³

Alec Bagot’s assertion in Coppin the Great, that Coppin and Viscount Canterbury made up is not correct. Citing a cartoon in Melbourne Punch, depicting the two men shaking hands, the cartoon was in fact referencing Coppin’s performance in Society, with Coppin and the Viscount wearing identical whiskers and clothing.³⁴

Over the years, Paul Pry made further appearances, at benefits and by popular demand; with his requisite curtain speech always keenly anticipated. He even made an appearance on the cover of an 1876 guidebook to the Mornington Peninsula compiled and published by H. Cordell, referencing Coppin’s distinction as the founding father of Sorrento.

In November 1881, beginning in Melbourne, Coppin commenced a round of farewell performances that would last until November 1883. It was a chance to play many of his best loved characters for the last time. Key among them was Paul Pry, who always managed to wander before the curtain at the end of the performance to retrieve his umbrella and say a few words.

In mid-1882, having withdrawn from the management of the Theatre Royal, Coppin determined to revive his political career and obtain a seat in the Legislative Council. Announcing himself as a candidate for Melbourne Province, his running mates included Cornelius Job Ham (1837–1909), auctioneer and outgoing Melbourne Lord Mayor, and Dr James Beaney (1828–1891), a well-known Collins Street surgeon. Likening the contest to a carnival side-show, Melbourne Punch published a cartoon under the heading ‘Rival Showmen’ with Coppin depicted in the garb of Paul Pry, Dr Beaney as a circus clown and C.J. Ham an aerial trapezist. At the 30 November 1882 elections, Ham was declared the victor on 2805 votes, with Beaney on 2698, and Coppin on 2143.³⁵ Though he was not successful, Coppin would go on to gain a seat in the Legislative Council in 1889.³⁶

As the founding father of Sorrento, Coppin’s Pry graces the cover of the Illustrated Handbook of the Bay, H. Cordell, Melbourne, 1876

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Rival Showmen: Coppin, dressed as Paul Pry, with his political rivals in the Legislative Council elections of 1882, Dr Beaney, dressed as a clown, and C.J. Ham as a trapeze artist. Cartoon by Tom Carrington, Melbourne Punch, 5 October 1882, p.135.

Trove

Coppin officially hung up his umbrella on 10 November 1883, playing Paul Pry for the last time at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide, as noted by the South Australian Weekly Chronicle:

The old comedian gave him to the audience with such broad humour as to make Paul Pry the source of a constant stream of merriment. The ludicrous make-up, the queer facial contortions, the low comedy of the speech and acting, all contributed to remind one of the Coppin of old, who delighted so many Adelaide audiences in former days by his cleverly comical performances. At the close of the second act Mr Coppin, on appearing before the curtain to receive a well-deserved ovation, took advantage of the occasion to utter a few opinions on South Australian matters. Naturally enough he could not refrain from allusions to the old times, and all of these were listened to with interest, whilst the cheery way in which he predicted the revival our industrial affairs after an icy period of depression led to an outburst of applause.³⁷

As Paul Pry, Coppin stayed loyal to the tradition of the character as established by its creator John Liston. His make-up, costume and acting style remained unchanged during the fifty years that he performed the role. He used his customary curtain speech as a vehicle for commenting on society and politics—and, if needed, he was not afraid to step on a few toes. Reading his curtain speeches, it is clear, even with the distance of time, that Coppin’s heart was in the right place. He cared about society and through the guise of his alter-ego, Pry, he ‘held up the mirror’—a key characteristic of an accomplished low comedian.

Endnotes

1. John Liston (1776-1846), English low comedian of the Regency era. Paul Pry played from 13 September–15 November 1825, and much of the following 1826 season.

2. For example, Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Paul Pry; or, I Hope I Don’t Intrude, Royal Coburg Theatre, London, 10 April 1825; William Moncrieff, Paul Pry on Horseback; or, A Peep at the Election, Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, London, 5 May 1826; and Charles Matthews, Paul Pry Married and Settled, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 3 October 1861

3. Davis, John Liston, Chapter VI

4. Trilby was a novel published by George du Maurier in 1894 about an artist’s model in bohemian Paris who comes under the spell of Svengali. When it was adapted for the stage by Paul M. Potter the following year, it became an instant hit, with all manner of objects adopting the Trilby name from hats and shoes to ice creams and cuts of meat.

5. Mullin, p.291

6. Bordman, p.539

7. Simmons played Paul Pry on the occasion of Mrs Chester’s Benefit at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, on 29 October 1835, and again on 31 October 1835 and 16 February 1836. During the following five decades, single performances were given by John Meredith (1840s); G.H. Rogers, W.H. Stephens and infant prodigy Anna Maria Quinn (1850s); J.C. Lambert (1860s); and J.L. Toole (1890s).

8. Coppin Collection, Series 11: Playbills and programmes, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

9. Stamford Mercury, 13 April 1827, p.1

10. Transcript copy of Coppin’s autobiography, undated, p.15. MS 8827, Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

11. Nottingham and Newark Mercury, 29 January 1841, p.37

12. Transcript copy of Coppin’s autobiography, undated, p.17. MS 8827, Coppin Collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

13. Hartnoll, p.793. Alongside the Tragedian and Low Comedian, other positions included Juvenile Lead, Old Man, Old Woman, Walking Lady, Walking Gentleman and Singing Chambermaid.

14. West Australian, 19 March 1906, p.5

15. David Rees (1794-1843), Irish comedian. He played Paul Pry in Dublin in 1837 and at the Haymarket in 1840.

16. Weekly Times (Sydney), 10 December 1881, p.18

17. This anomaly is noted by David Vincent, p.52. See copy of play via Google Books, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=7ERTAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

18. See copy HathiTrust,  https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t3hx1xv86

19. See catalogue entry, National Library of Australia, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/8530075

20. See copy Google Books, https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Paul_Pry_etc

21. I have not been able to locate a copy of this edition. A listing of Lacy’s Acting Editions compiled by Lou Burnand comprising 1498 plays across 100 volumes, published between 1850 and 1874, includes Poole’s Paul Pry as Volume 15, No. 222.

22. See Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/paulpryacomedyin00pooluoft/page/n1/mode/2up

23. Coppin Collection, Series 7: Playscripts, State Library Victoria, Melbourne. Sydney-born Andrews was a popular low comedian in Australia during the 1860s and 1870s. He notably played Paul Pry in Brisbane in 1867.

24. Australasian (Sydney), 17 September 1870, p.18

25. Coppin Collection, Series 7: Playscripts, State Library Victoria, Melbourne. The same comment was included in later editions, such as an 1880s reprint by Dicks’.

26. Freeman’s Journal (Sydney), 1 June 1864, p.6

27. Herald (Melbourne), 3 April 1865, p.3

28. Mercury (Hobart), 12 April 1865, p.3

29. See Age (Melbourne), 13 September 1870, p.3

30. Bagot, p.333, from the Age (Melbourne), 11 January 1872, p.3

31. Melbourne Punch, 4 January 1872, p.5

32. The catalogue entry date of ‘about 1860’ may now be amended to 1872. Coppin Collection, MS 8827, State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

33. Under the heading ‘Revenge! Ha! Ha!’, the Herald (Melbourne), 17 December 1872, p,2, called Coppin the ‘concrete chronicle of the time’, holding ‘the mirror up thoroughly’, noting that his impersonation of Lord Ptarmigant ‘eclipsed the best effort of [George] Fawcett’ who a decade earlier ‘took off’ Dr Hunter and L.L. Smith.

34. Bagot, p.333. The cartoon was published in Melbourne Punch, 2 January 1873, p.5.

35. Argus (Melbourne), 1 December 1882, p.5

36. Coppin served on the Victorian Legislative Council, 1858-1863 and 1889-1895, and on the Legislative Assembly, 1874-1877 and 1883-1888.

37. South Australian Weekly Chronicle, 10 November 1883, p,15

Bibliography

Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1965

Gerard Bordman, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, Oxford University Press, 1984

Frederick Burwick, A History of Romantic Literature, Wiley Blackwell, 2019

Jim Davis, John Liston, Comedian, Society for Theatre Research, 1985

Jim Davis, Comic acting and Portraiture in late-Georgian and Regency England, Oxford University Press, 2015

Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, new edition, Oxford University Press, 1983

[Douglas Jerrold], Paul Pry, J. Duncombe & Co., London, 1825

Donald Mullin, Victorian Plays: A record of significant productions of the London stage, 1837-1901, Greenwood Press, 1987

John Poole, Paul Pry, E.M. Morden, New York, 1827

John Poole, Paul Pry, E.B. Clayton, New York / Christina Neal, Philadelphia, c.1833

John Poole, Paul Pry, French’s Standard Drama, No. 76, Samuel French, New York, c.1850

John Poole, Paul Pry, Wm. Taylor and Co., New York, c.1850

John Poole, Paul Pry, Lacy’s Acting Edition, T.H. Lacy, London, c.1863

John Poole, Paul Pry, Dicks’ Standard Plays, No. 321, John Dicks, London, c.1880

David Vincent, I Hope I Don't Intrude: Privacy and its Dilemmas in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Oxford University Press, 2014

George Coppin, New York, 1865. Photo by Charles D. Fredricks. George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS8827/13/217

April 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Selth Coppin, actor, theatre owner and entrepreneur. Simon Plant pays tribute to a man whose contribution to this country’s advancement stretched beyond just things theatrical. 

George Selth Coppin—actor and impresario, parliamentarian and philanthropist—was always chasing the next best thing. A new act, a new speculation. Something to entertain and amuse colonial audiences who expected nothing less from the man they dubbed ‘The Father of Australian Theatre’.

One day in March 1865, in New York City, forty-five-year-old Coppin found himself sitting still in front of a camera at Charles D. Fredricks’ Photographic Temple of Art.

This palatial establishment on Broadway was the biggest, most stylish photographic studio in Gotham and specialised in portraiture, producing small albumen prints mounted on card—known as a carte-de-visite—which could be pressed into albums.

Coppin, who had arrived on America’s West Coast three months earlier, had already left some of his plain calling cards at theatres he hoped might host a season of Shakespeare starring the eminent British tragedians Charles Kean and Ellen Kean. But this industrious English-born entrepreneur faced an uphill battle. These were the dying days of America’s terrible Civil War. England was unpopular, seen to have sympathised with the soon to be defeated South. And Broadway theatre managers were prospering with all-American stars such as Edwin Booth (playing one hundred nights of Hamlet at the Winter Garden).

In the Colony of Victoria, his adopted home since the early 1850s, Coppin was a household name. One of the most prominent men in the burgeoning city of Melbourne. Friends and enemies alike referred to him as ‘The Artful Dodger’ because of his numerous enterprises in and out of the theatre world. But in New York, he was just another showman hustling for business. So, on his second or third day in America’s show business capital, Coppin was ready for his close-up.

The Fredricks studio—favoured by American Presidents, Generals and eminent actors—was renowned for capturing not just the look of a person but the very essence of their character. Coppin’s portrait, taken slightly side on, suggests a strong personality. A stocky block of a man whose partially unbuttoned waistcoat strains to contain an expanding waistline. The camera lens accentuates all the positives: Coppin’s high domed forehead and squarish jaw, full lips and penetrating gaze. But there are deep bags under those arresting eyes. Having been on the road with the Keans for more than six months, Coppin was fatigued and anxious about finding a suitable theatre in Manhattan. His ‘old enemy’, gout, was also giving him hell.

‘Your poor old hubby is having a great deal of knocking about,’ he confessed in a letter home to his young wife Lucy Hilsden. ‘Since I left you (in October, 1864) I have travelled... 17,821 miles.'

But Coppin’s journey up and down America’s East Coast had only just begun.

Indeed, after the Fredricks photograph was taken and pressed into a Biblical looking album of carte-de-visite celebrity portraits, he had another 40 years of busy public life in front of him: a period during which he won a seat in Victoria’s Parliament, established Old Colonists’ cottages for retired actors, set up a post office savings bank, helped form the St John Ambulance and bankrolled the seaside resort of Sorrento. All this in between managing Melbourne’s Theatre Royal, staging lavish pantomimes, importing stars (such as the American duo James Cassius Williamson and Maggie Moore) and giving numerous ‘farewell performances’.

Coppin’s life in Australia was no less frantic in the 20 years before his North American adventure. Within a fortnight of arriving in Sydney in March 1843, in the company of an older actress (Maria Watkins Burroughs), this young gun was ‘on the boards’ and winning plaudits for his ‘low comedy’ characters.

Coppin’s sly alter egos—Paul Pry, the meddlesome snoop, Jem Baggs, the vagabond fiddler, Billy Barlow, the salty yarn spinner—would be staple parts of his comic repertoire for decades to come.

His biographer Alec Bagot writes: ‘Coppin knew the pieces in which he excelled... characters that demanded the best of the comedians’ art.’

Successful seasons followed in Van Diemen’s Land, the Port Phillip District and South Australia. By 1848, the year Maria died, Coppin was a resourceful manager as well, with theatrical and hotel holdings in Adelaide—not to mention a few racehorses.

An ‘incurable gambler’, to quote author Hal Porter’s description of him, Coppin’s good fortune was invariably followed by adversity. In the early 1850s, he invested in copper when everyone else was chasing gold. Then, trekking out to the diggings himself, he struck nothing but trouble and trudged home ‘without sixpence in his pocket’. 

Facing insolvency, Coppin bounced back by entertaining the miners. Comedies and concerts, melodrama and opera... everything was grist to his mill as the manager of two theatres in Geelong. By 1855, Coppin had repaid creditors and was ready to unveil his biggest ‘amusement’ yet: a five thousand pound prefabricated theatre for Melbourne, imported from Manchester.

The Olympic, or ‘Iron Pot’ as it was nicknamed, was located in the heart of the city and hosted a hugely popular season of plays starring the acclaimed English Shakespearean actor Gustavus Vaughan Brooke. Emboldened by their success, Coppin and Brooke went into business together, adding the Theatre Royal, Astley’s Amphitheatre and Richmond’s Cremorne Gardens to their property portfolio.

Cremorne Gardens—on the banks of the Yarra near the Punt Road crossing—was the jewel in the crown. Purchased by Coppin and Brooke in 1856, this amusement park and pleasure garden boasted an open air theatre (Pantheon) and bandstand, sideshows and shooting galleries and spectacular pyrotechnic representations of Vesuvius erupting.

Cremorne was also the site of ‘instructive novelties‘, most notably the first balloon ascent in Australia. Coppin ran it all with clicking efficiency but his enthusiasm for entertainment waned as a life in politics beckoned. First as a Richmond councillor, then as a Member of the Victorian Legislative Council.

‘My part as an actor is played out,’ he declared in June 1858. Three years later, Coppin was compelled to ‘resume the active duties of my [theatre] profession’ due to ‘a series of unforeseen financial misfortunes’.

Not only had Coppin’s partnership with Brooke dissolved. He had also invested unwisely in suburban railways. As Bagot observed: ‘Coppin, apprenticed to the stage since birth, was forever trying to leave it but always, by force of circumstance, compelled to return’.

Born to a family of strolling players in Sussex, in 1819, young George was just six when he made his first stage appearance playing a ‘cuckoo solo’ on the violin. A sketch made at the time depicts him holding a fiddle half as big as himself but Bagot observes this ‘tubby little lad’ looks ‘preternaturally serious... if not a prodigy, at any rate a boy of exceptional precocity’.

On the road with his parents, Coppin learnt the mechanics of his profession. He absorbed its language, customs and superstitions along with the air he breathed. But unlike his father, the rebellious son of a clergyman, he was not content to be a busker touting at taverns.

Impatient and fired with energy, Coppin struck out on his own as an itinerant actor and secured ‘low comedy’ spots with touring companies. Larger character roles followed in plays including Polonius in a production of Hamlet starring a young Charles Kean. Coppin’s intimate association with Burroughs was forged on a stage in Ireland and together, the pair decided to ‘elope’ to Australia in late 1842.

Coppin quickly connected with colonial audiences. Sociable and at ease among ordinary folk, especially if a round of sherry and bitters was being served, he had an instinctive feel for popular taste. His characters were, for the most part, common men. And disguised as Billy Barlow, an apparently daft but shrewd commentator, Coppin was able to make topical allusions on stage that would have been considered litigious if pronounced in the public domain.

His voice, sometimes raspy, had great carrying power while his gift for mimicry knew no bounds.

‘He parodies everyone,’ one observer marvelled. Coppin’s burlesque imitation of Lola Montez’ famous ‘Spider Dance’ was so accurate, writes Bagot, it was ‘only saved from a charge of vulgarity by the side splitting roars of laughter it provoked’.

He stood barely five foot six but barrel-chested Coppin gave the impression of greater size. Especially when he threw punches, turned somersaults and slapped his stomach like a bass drum.

Mme Céleste de Chabrillan, wife of the first French consular agent in Melbourne, noticed how ‘the audience adores him [Coppin], they applaud with all their might,’ and was enchanted by his habit of going down to the bar at interval.

‘He keeps his stage costume on while serving his customers,’ she wrote. ‘He’s director, artist, wine merchant and waiter all in one’.

Even his toughest critics admired Coppin’s ability to ‘lose himself’ in another character. Five vignettes of him in ‘various costumes’, photographed in 1864, shows just how transformative he could be.

Behind the scenes, Coppin was a dedicated, if unconventional, family man. Marrying Harriet Hilsden (Brooke’s sister in law) in August 1855, he domesticated Cremorne—planting it out with mazes, shrubs and ferns—and enjoyed coming home late, in his carriage, and finding supper ready for him, ‘kettle steaming on the hob’.

The marriage was short-lived. Giving birth to their third child, Harriet died in 1859. Eighteen months later, in a move that raised many eyebrows, Coppin married his 17-year-old stepdaughter Lucy.

‘Neither of the contracting parties was perturbed,’ writes Bagot, ‘least of all the bridegroom to whom matrimony was no new venture’.

This time, Coppin was rarely at home. Losing control of the Theatre Royal, and unable to discharge his debts, he was compelled to tour the gold fields and New Zealand.

Breaking with Brooke, who returned to England, Coppin claimed to have ‘always lost money by Shakespeare without a first class star’.

In 1862, Coppin found the stars he needed to stave off insolvency: Charles and Ellen Kean. They were British theatre royalty, renowned for expensive, historically accurate productions of the Bard, and their appearances at Coppin’s new Haymarket Theatre drew appreciative audiences.

The Kean’s grand tour of the Australian colonies lasted nine months. Pressing on to California, the Midwest and New England, again under Coppin’s management, they made a small fortune. Coppin prospered, too, returning to Melbourne in early 1866 with new ‘speculations’ ranging from soda water fountains to roller skates. As always, his mind moved by flashes and whims, some enterprises paying off (his roller-skate rink, the first in Australia, was a big hit), others not.

Coppin’s resilience was legendary. When his Theatre Royal burned down in 1872, uninsured, he promptly built another one. Another source of income to stand him in good stead was his copyright agency. It was badly needed in the 1880s, when Coppin’s ambitious promotion of Sorrento as a tourist destination swallowed vast sums.

Worse still was the ‘bank crash’ of the 1890s. Coppin, ‘greatly aggravated by mental anxiety’ over his finances, was only saved from insolvency by box office receipts at his happily revived Theatre Royal.

This indefatigable showman kept making ‘farewell appearances’ until 1901, when the effects of advanced age—and gout—confined him largely to his beloved Richmond home ‘Pine Grove’. Photographs taken around the turn of the century show him enjoying the garden but Tom Roberts’ 1895 portrait of him is more illuminating.

Here is the legend caught unawares, shifting his considerable weight in a chair and looking ruddy cheeked. Coppin’s receding hair is almost frosted white but there’s a jaunty air about him, a twinkle in those blue eyes.

Taken ill at Sorrento, Coppin took his final bow in Richmond on 14 March 1906.

How great was ‘Coppin the Great’? Other entrepreneurs made their mark on colonial Australia—Henry Deering and Bland Holt, George Darrell and J.C. Williamson to name a few—but having his hand in so many amusements in so many places over so many years, Coppin is the undisputed colossus. The pre-eminent entertainment figure in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It could be argued that this self-made man stretched himself too thin, that he might have achieved even more in the theatre world had he not kept chasing ‘respectability’ in the political sphere. But Coppin’s roller coaster career—a series of advances, retreats and comebacks—was part of his enduring appeal with Australians, magnifying his fame while pointing up his human qualities.

Coppin’s own comic performances spanned the reign of Queen Victoria, an astonishing feat and a tribute to his prodigious energy. He was by no means the most innovative actor of his day—familiar character types were his forte—but down the decades, as an impresario, he was never afraid to embrace the new and the novel.

On the 200th anniversary of his birth, perhaps it is Coppin’s role as ringmaster that stands as his greatest legacy. He opened up spaces for performances by others—bellringers and minstrels, conjurors and Shakespearean actors—and the parade of tricks and marvels he orchestrated over 60 crowded years hugely enriched Australia’s popular culture.

Late in life, Coppin delighted in telling friends how his 1840s journey from England to the Antipodes was decided on the flip of a coin. It was heads America, he said, and tails Australia.

‘Fortunately for the colonies—and myself—Australia won!’

George Coppin, aged 6, playing the overture to Lodoiska, 1825.

State Library of Victoria, H39751

George Coppin, 1849. Drawing by S.T. Gill.

State Library of South Australia, B 341

George Coppin, c. 1855. Photo attributed to Thomas Glaister.

Dixon Library, State Library of New South Wales, DL Pa 54

Coppin’s Olympic Theatre, 1855.

WG Alma Conjuring Collection, State Library of Victoria, P.326/No. 113

Cremorne Gardens, 1857.

Private Collection

The first Theatre Royal, Melbourne, with Stephenson’s team of English Cricketers in the foreground, 1861.

Private Collection

George Coppin (in top hat) in the Crystal Bar at Cremorne Gardens. Copy of 1860s' photo by Talma, c. 1900.

Coppin Collection, National Library of Australia, PIC Box P863 #P863/17

George Coppin, c. 1863.

National Portrait Gallery, 2010.36

Portrait of Charles and Ellen Kean, New York, 1865. Photo by Mathews B. Brady.

State Library of Victoria, H31489

George Coppin, New York, 1865. Photo by Charles D. Fredricks.

George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS8827/13/217

Five vignettes of Coppin in various costumes, c. 1864. Photo by A. McDonald, Melbourne.

State Library of Victoria, H9470

Coppin as Crack the Cobbler in The Turnpike Gate. Photo by E.C. Waddington & Co, Melbourne.

The Coppin Portfolio, George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

Coppin as Paul Pry, 1860s.

George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

Coppin as Paul Pry, 1860s. Photo by E.C. Waddington & Co, Melbourne.

The Coppin Portfolio, George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

Coppin as Daniel White in Milky White. Photo by E.C. Waddington & Co, Melbourne.

The Coppin Portfolio, George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

The second Theatre Royal, Melbourne, 1877. Photo by N.J. Caire for Anglo-Australasian Photo Co.

State Library of Victoria, H84.3/17

Complimentary Benefit to George Coppin, Exhibition Hall, Geelong, 22 July 1882.

George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

The Anchorage, Coppin’s home in Sorrento, c. 1880s. Photo by Fred Kruger.

Album of Victoria Views, State Library of Victoria, H41138/26

Pine Grove, Coppin’s Richmond house, c. 1880. Photo by J.P. Lind.

Coppin Collection, National Library of Australia, PIC Box P863 #P863/4

George Coppin, First Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Victoria, July 1885. Photo by Harrison & Co.

National Library of Australia, PIC Box P863 #P863/24

George Coppin, c. 1890. Photo by Hibling & Fields, Melbourne.

State Library of South Australia, B 22860

Portrait of George Coppin by Tom Roberts, c. 1895-1899.

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, 2003.212

George Coppin in his garden at Pine Grove, c. 1905. Photo by J.P. Lind.

Views of Pine Grove, Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827

Plaque dedicated to the memory of George Coppin, installed in the foyer of the Comedy Theatre, site of the Coppin’s Olympic Theatre, 1939

State Library of Victoria, H13044

SOURCES

Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965
Brian Carroll, Australian Stage Album, Macmillan, Sydney, 1976
Manning Clark, A History of Australia: IV The Earth Abideth Forever 1851-1888, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978
George Selth Coppin Papers, State Library of Victoria, MS 8827
Sarah Engledow, ‘The Multifarious Career of George Selth Coppin’, Portrait 13, Spring 2004,
https://www.portrait.gov.au/magazines/13/the-multifarious-career-of-george-selth-coppin (accessed 11 March 2019)
Kate Flaherty and Edel Lamb, ‘The 1863 Melbourne Shakespeare War: Barry Sullivan, Charles and Ellen Kean, and the play of cultural usurpation on the Australian stage’, Australian Studies, vol. 4, 2012, pp. 1–17
J.M. Hardwicke, Emigrant in Motley: the journey of Charles and Ellen Kean in quest of a theatrical fortune in Australia and America as told by their hitherto unpublished letters,Salisbury Square, London, 1954
John Kardross, A Brief History of the Australian Theatre, New Century Press, Sydney, 1955
Benjamin McArthur, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and nineteenth century American theatre, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2007
Helen Musa, ‘George Coppin’, entry in Philip Parsons, Companion to Theatre in Australia, Currency Press, Sydney, 1995, pp. 161–162
Hal Porter, Stars of Australian Stage and Screen, Rigby, Adelaide, 1965
John Poynter, The Audacious Adventures of Dr Louis Lawrence Smith, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2014
Simon Plant, Acting Their Age: Kean and Sullivan playing for fame in the Southern Hemisphere, Viglione Press, Black Rock, VIC, 2017

The comedy’slong but broken entertainment history can be dated from 29 June 1852 when Joseph A. Rowe opened Rowe’s American Circus on this prominent corner. Arriving from California just as the first bounties of the gold-rush were flooding into Melbourne, Rowe is said to have made a fortune in the two years his circus stood here. Reputedly laden with cash and treasure, he returned to California in February 1854 and an advertisement in The Melbourne Morning Herald on the following 14 October by his wife Eliza, announced the closure of the circus and the auction of the buildings, horses and theatrical properties.

Joseph Andrew Rowe

Museum of Performance & Design, San Francisco

Andrew Rowe with one of his performing horses

From California’s Pioneer Circus by Joseph Andrew Rowe, edited by Albert Dressler, 1926, p.29

The circus was housed in a permanent wooden amphitheatre with seating in a dress circle, boxes and pit. After Rowe’s departure the building was occasionally used by concert artistes or minstrel troupes such as Rainer’s Ethiopian Serenaders. Shortly after this, the foundation stone for the first ‘legitimate’ theatre to be built here was laid on the corner of Lonsdale and Stephen (now Exhibition) Streets.

This theatre was made up almost entirely of cast iron. prefabricated in England and shipped out in individually numbered pieces for assembly on site. It was built for George Coppin, the energetic English born actor and entrepreneur who, when touring his homeland in 1854, had commissioned its design from Fox & Henderson of Birmingham and its fabrication from E. & T. Bellhouse of Manchester. Coppin had signed up the Irish tragedian Gustavus Vaughan Brooke to tour Australia and, according to Alec Bagot’s biography, Coppin the Great, although he considered Sydney’s theatres adequate for such an important engagement, he thought the Queen’s—at that time Melbourne’s only existing playhouse—‘a wretched hole’.

Coppin’s Olympic Theatre – ‘The Iron Pot’- 1855

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The foundation stone for the as yet unnamed theatre, which was laid by Brooke, with Coppin and other members of his company and the press in attendance on 18 April 1855, recorded that the architect for the building was C.H. Ohlfsen Bagge and the builders George Cornwell and Company. The theatre was eventually christened the Olympic in honour of Brooke who had had his first success as Othello at London’s Olympic theatre. Coppin’s competitors immediately derided it as ‘the Iron Pot’, however, the name by which it was soon popularly known.

Some six weeks after the cast iron components had arrived on site the Olympic was close enough to completion to be opened for the first public performance on 11 June 1855. This was by the Wizard Jacobs, ‘conjurer, ventriloquist, acrobat, rated as the world’s best one man entertainer’.

The Olympic, whose entrance faced into Lonsdale Street, was described thus in The Argus of 11 June 1855: ‘The iron walls are for the most part cased with brick …’ while the interior presented a ‘light and exceedingly elegant appearance … The arch of the proscenium is broad and flattened; it has a span of thirty-three feet … surmounting the proscenium is an elegant casting in papier mâché of the royal arms, and the arch is supported by six Corinthian pillars, the flutings and capitals of which, being gilded, have an exceedingly rich effect. The ceiling... has been judiciously painted a blue white and spangled with gold stars.’

Coppin’s Olympic Theatre. Photo by Walter Bentley Woodbury.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The decorations by William Pitt Sr (whose son later became the foremost Australian theatre architect of his day) were in green, pink and French white. Seating capacity was variously estimated at between 1150 and 1500 in pit, stalls, dress circle and a variety of boxes. What seems to be the sole surviving photograph of the Olympic’s exterior was taken by visiting English photographer Walter Woodbury about 1855 or 1856.

An ‘Old Playgoer’, reminiscing in The Australasian of 14 August 1886, recalled the Olympic as ‘hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Internally it resembled a chapel, with a rectangular gallery for a dress circle; and the adjacent bar was nearly half as large as the theatre itself. But it was the custom in those days for the greater portion of the male part of the audience to rush out for “refreshment” at the end of each act, and a nobbler of brandy was regarded as the cement of friendship.’

The official opening of the Olympic took place on 30 July 1855 when a proper stage had been installed for the first dramatic season. Despite torrential rain and the streets being ‘ankle-deep in mud’ the house was ‘crowded in every part’, according to The Age of 31 July. After a much applauded prologue declaimed by Brooke, there was a ‘renewal of the applause, and to vociferous calls for “Coppin”, who, however, did not make his appearance’, The Argus of the same date reported. Without further delay, the first act of the opening play, Bulwer Lytton’s The Lady of Lyons proceeded.

Gustavus Vaughan Brooke, c.1861

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Fanny Cathcart with her husband Robert Heir, c.1860

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Brooke’s leading lady was 22-year-old Fanny Cathcart, who later became one of the most popular and versatile local players. She had signed an onerous two-year contract with Brooke in England, and her fiancé, English actor Robert Heir, was also a member of Brooke's company. Heir soon became dissatisfied with the secondary roles he was given, however, and persuaded his wife to beak her contract so that they could star together under the rival management of John Black at the Theatre Royal. Although a court case ensued which Cathcart lost, Brooke eventually agreed to alter her contract to more favourable terms and the couple returned to his company in October 1855.  

The Olympic was immediately thrown into direct competition with the Theatre Royal which had opened only two weeks earlier. When that management reduced admission prices Coppin was forced to do likewise, although he publicly admitted that by doing so he was running at a loss. Once, when Lola Montes was the rival attraction at the Royal, Coppin included a burlesque of her famous spider dance in his program: ‘after cavorting all over the stage in a ridiculous manner’, Coppin (according to Bagot), ‘withdrew from under an extremely scanty skirt an enormous animal resembling a spider’, and chased it across the boards. The people in the audience ‘literally rolled out of their seats with laughter... His imitation was a riot. saved from a charge of vulgarity only by the side-splitting roars of laughter it provoked.’

The partnership of Brooke, the brilliant tragedian, and Coppin, the popular comedian and shrewd showman, soon won over the majority of the audiences—even though the Royal was much bigger, more opulent and better placed. In spite of this hard won supremacy there was still unrelenting competition from too many theatres: the combined capacities of the Royal, the Olympic, Astley’s Amphitheatre and the Queen’s was close to 8000 people. In addition to these the Salle de Valentino, Cremorne Gardens, the Exhibition Building and numerous lesser halls and hotels all sapped a share of the potential audience from a population of only 70 000.

After tours of the goldfields and Tasmania, Brooke returned to the Olympic for a ‘farewell’ performance on 1 December 1855 and, prior to an announced departure for California, appeared before a crowded house. The departure was postponed however and Brooke was back for a fresh season on 28 January 1856 when he appeared as Brutus in Julius Caesar ‘for the first time in the colonies’. He also gave a first Australian performance of Henry V on 25 February. Brooke’s ‘most positively... last appearance’ was on 26 April and for once, as far as the Olympic was concerned, this was true.

Coppin and Brooke had become business partners and early in June 1856 they took control of the Theatre Royal, left in charge of the Official Receiver after the bankruptcy of its owner, John Black. From this time on the Olympic went into a sudden, irreversible decline, opening only sporadically for imported players and concert and vaudeville artistes of (mostly) the second rank.

Madame Anna Bishop, 1850s. Engraving by Daniel John Pound, after a photograph by John Jabez Edwin Mayall.

National Portrait Gallery, London

American actor James Stark, c.1850. Photographer unknown.

The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

There was nothing second rate about Madame Anna Bishop however; apart from being the estranged wife of the English composer Sir Henry Bishop, she was an internationally renowned soprano and probably the most widely travelled and adventurous opera singer of her day. Madame Bishop began a month long series of concerts at the Olympic on 13 May 1856. Mr. and Mrs. James Stark, ‘celebrated American artistes’, starred in a month-long season of drama, beginning on 18 June in Richelieu. By 20 October, however, with Coppin and Brooke now firmly established at the Royal, the Olympic was housing such attractions as ‘The Siege of Sebastopol’, a ‘Grand Exhibition of Mechanical figures, Model Scenes and Theatre of Arts… for one week only’.

Anna Bishop returned for ‘one night only’ on 8 January 1857 and four nights later came the actress Marie Duret in a season of plays. Duret had once been Brooke’s mistress and according to his biographer, W.J. Lawrence, ‘after feathering her nest for years... without a word of warning, she ran off to America…’ Duret was evidently a versatile actress with a penchant for male roles for she first appeared as the highwayman Jack Sheppard then as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. She also played ‘three different characters’ in A Duel in the Dark and The French Spy and essayed as many as eight parts in Winning a Husband. Appearing in two plays per night, on some nights Duret portrayed as many as eleven separate characters! Energy and versatility notwithstanding, her season, although originally announced for 24 nights, was terminated half way through and The Argus of 26 January noted that ‘Mademoiselle Duret has been playing … with very equivocal success...’

It soon became clear that the Olympic was no longer viable as a theatre and, after the closure of a short-lived ‘Polytechnic Exhibition’, it was reopened on 11 May 1857 as ‘The Argyle Assembly Rooms’ for ‘Terpsichorean pastimes’. The building remained a dance hall until 30 November 1857 when it was briefly reopened as ‘Coppin’s Olympic’ for a return season by the Wizard Jacobs. Another minstrel troupe began a season there on 1 February 1858 but by 22 May it had been converted back to the ‘Argyle Rooms’ where a ‘Full Dress Ball’ was held two nights later.

A fresh novelty was advertised in the Melbourne press in November 1858: ‘Great Pedestrian Feat. 1000 miles in 1000 hours. Alan McKean who so successfully accomplished this trial of strength, endurance and perseverance at Ballaarat, will walk his first mile in Melbourne on Tuesday 23 November at Seven O’clock in the evening at the Olympic Theatre and terminate the undertaking (D.V.) 3rd January 1859. Hours of walking, a quarter before and one minute after each even hour. Tickets for the 1000 hours £1.1s.’

In February 1859 Coppin and Brooke dissolved their partnership and sole ownership of the Olympic reverted to Coppin. Bagot reasons that Coppin retained the Olympic (which cost £200 per week to run and was mostly running at a loss) in favour of the profit-making Royal on sentimental grounds: ‘the building was so much his own conception that no thought of relinquishing it seems seriously to have entered his mind!’

An address delivered by Mr. Fred. Younge, on the occasion of the opening of the Olympic Theatre, Melbourne, June 20, 1859

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

George Coppin as Paul Pry, one of the many characters he played at the Olympic between 1856 and 1859. Hand coloured photograph, c.1870.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Coppin had been elected an MLC in the Victorian parliament in 1858 and, preoccupied as he was with a political career, he leased the Olympic to Frederick and Richard Younge who reopened it on 30 June 1859 with a program of comic plays. Coppin himself returned to the Olympic’s stage for two short seasons of charity performances—the first from 23 to 30 July and again from 24 August to 3 September. In spite of his good intentions, Coppin attracted criticism for this from a conservative element who considered it unseemly for an MLC to appear on stage. Coppin retorted that if other MLCs could practice their professions, why couldn’t he?—and very sensibly continued to perform.

The last quasi-theatrical attraction at the Olympic was a ‘Female Pedestrian Feat’ beginning on 4 January 1860 in which a Miss Howard and a Mrs. Douglas were matched to walk 1500 miles in 1000 hours, After this the theatre was advertised as ‘to let or for sale’. As there were no takers, Coppin himself eventually converted part of the building into ‘Australia’s first Turkish Baths’. He reminisced in an Argus interview of 10 April 1899: ‘The green-room became the first hot room, the property-room the second and a dressing room the third. The ground under the stage was made into a swimming bath, and there was also a shallow bath in the space occupied by the pit. Tents were pitched in rows in the dress circle to serve as dressing rooms... But I could not make any money at it.’

Fire destroyed the baths and most of the old theatre building early in the morning of 29 November 1866. All that remained were ‘the bare walls and iron fittings’, according to The Age of 30 November. But as late as 10 June 1933 a correspondent to the same paper reports that a portion of the ‘Iron Pot’ was still ‘working out its destiny’ as a wharfside shed at Hokitika in the South Island of New Zealand.

Madame Fillis, c.1893. Photographer unknown.

Gordon Ireland Scrapbook, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Professor Fillis, c.1893. Photographer unknown.

Gordon Ireland Scrapbook, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The baths were rebuilt, but replaced by a furniture warehouse in 1873 and this remained until 1891. After standing vacant for several years the site came full circle when The Australian Hippodrome was built here in 1894. An Argus advertisement on opening day, 25 August announced: ‘£1000 spent on the property £500 spent on new canvas £250 spent on timber £100 spent on chairs £300 spent on new costumes and uniforms £200 spent on electric and gas lighting £100 spent on upholstery, carpets and decorations £300 spent on advertising.’ The Argusof 27 August 1894 reported: ‘The hippodrome is surrounded by a high wall, and was specially prepared for the circus. A large new tent has been erected inside and is comfortably seated.’ Fillis’s Circus and Menagerie was the opening attraction and remained here until 29 September 1894. Other circuses occasionally used the Hippodrome over the next few years but it seems never to have been very popular—possibly because of the relatively small size of the site—and by 1903 Sands and McDougall’s Melbourne Directory lists the address as vacant once more.

E.I. Cole

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Program cover for Cole’s Bohemian Dramatic Company at the Hippodrome, 1907

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Edward I. Cole, a flamboyant tent showman who liked to dress up as famed American frontier scout, Buffalo Bill, with shoulder length hair, flowing moustache and wide sombrero, brought the site back to life in 1906. After successfully establishing a tent theatre in Sydney with a repertoire of melodramas that usually featured cowboys, Indians and horses as well as actors, Cole split his Bohemian Dramatic Company in two to set up a second base in Melbourne.

Cole had already commissioned plans for a ‘People’s Theatre and Circus Building’ from Sydney architects Parkes and Harrison which, while not specifically designed for the site, were at one stage submitted to the Melbourne City Council for approval. Now held in the council’s archives, and dated February 1905, these show a quite elaborately decorated iron roofed auditorium of brick and stucco with an arched and colonnaded facade enclosing both stage and circus ring. Unfortunately, no surviving detailed written or pictorial records of the site at this time have so far come to light but it seems unlikely that any part of this ‘People’s Theatre’ was ever built there. Cole probably renovated whatever remained of the earlier building and opened his season of ‘Drama Under Canvas’ at ‘The Hippodrome’ about 19 December 1906.

A four-act bushranger melodrama, King of the Road, was the first offering but on Christmas night a sacred concert and biograph entertainment replaced the cowboys and horses—this leading on, a year or so later, to a series of Sunday night charity concerts and film shows that became a regular fixture. Circus-melodrama remained the staple, however, and weekly change plays followed into the new year. Although the emphasis was on outdoor action, Cole’s repertoire also included such popular dramas as Boucicault’s The Octoroon and the perennial East Lynne and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The Bohemian Company’s first season closed in mid November 1907 and ‘Broncho George’s Team of Wild Australian Outlaws and Rough Riders’ was the attraction from 16 November until a fortnight before Cole’s return on 21 December. The Bohemians played several more Hippodrome seasons up to mid June 1909 although by now the company was appearing here only on Friday and Saturday nights and touring the suburbs the rest of the week.

To be continued

The Coppin Collection at the State Library Victoria covers the theatre activities of the Coppin family from the 1830s, and the career of Bland Holt, who took over the business later in the 19th century. Much has been written about George Coppin (1819–1906) and Bland Holt (1951–1942), so in the interest of avoiding repetition, I will confine discussion in this article to the contents of the Library’s collection in the hope of introducing the reader to this vast and wonderous archive. In the course of writing this piece, new and surprising information was revealed about the provenance of the Coppin Collection, which will also be discussed in the concluding section.

The Collection contains personal papers pertaining to the life of the Coppin family (including personal correspondence, family photographs, scrapbooks of press clippings of personal interest and family history, connections with clubs, societies and charities, illuminated addresses, and memorabilia), as well as corporate records of the theatre management activities of George Coppin (including legal documents, business correspondence, promotional material and playbills). There is also material on political elections, freemasonry, the Old Colonists’ Association, and on Sorrento.

The Bland Holt component of the archive does not have as much personal material like correspondence and memoirs, but is very rich in programs, playbills and posters, reports, photographs, playscripts, music scores, and costume and scenery designs. There are also documents relating to the research done by Alec Bagot while writing Coppin’s biography, Coppin the Great.¹ The papers include drafts of the book, correspondence, notes, articles, lists of sources and receipts.

A new Finding Aid² was completed in 2023, incorporating legacy data from handwritten contents lists, as well as new description for previously unseen material, some with digitised images attached. What follows is some discussion and description of the countless treasures in this extraordinary collection.

Playbills

Theatre Royal, Geelong. Rainer's Original Ethiopian Serenaders, concluding with Mesmerism, 1853

MS8827/11/859

Theatre Royal, Geelong. Discarded Daughter; Maniac Mother, or Mabel's Curse, 1853

MS8827/11/882

One of the most significant components of this Collection is the playbills. There are 1280 individual playbills in the collection,³ and numerous others pasted into scrapbooks and elsewhere. Playbills relating to productions by the Coppin family and company date from 1811 to 1901. They include many from England which were collected and sent to Coppin in Australia by his father. The playbills relating to productions by the Bland Holt company date from 1879 to 1907. Just under half are for performances in England (dating from 1811 to 1854) and the other half for Australia (dating from 1843 to 1907). There are a few American playbills too, from 1864-1865, when George Coppin travelled there. They are aesthetically beautiful, designed to be eye-catching using varying text fonts and sizes, with relatively little illustration in the early ones. Later playbills include engravings amongst the text, and by the later decades of the 19th century, with the use of colour lithography and even photolithography, they begin to more resemble a poster rather than a notice. There are also a number of playbills printed on silk. These were usually produced for special guests, mementos for valued clients or special occasions, such as Coppin’s farewell performances.

Theatre Royal, Sydney. One of the Best, silk playbill, with tartan design, for Bland Holt's Military Command Night performance of One of the Best, at Theatre Royal, Sydney, 24 April 1896

Accession number MS8827/11/1106

Exhibition Hall, Geelong. Rivals; The Artful Dodge, letterpress on silk, program for the last performance George Coppin was to make on stage in Geelong on Saturday 22 July 1882. As well as the two plays, the event included a farewell address by George Coppin.

Accession number MS8827/11/1032

As the playbills became more decorative and elaborate, they also became larger, incorporating vast amounts of information. This larger format meant there was space to include information that was often left off the smaller bills. We can see who the star attractions were, what songs and other entertainment was offered, scenery descriptions, and previews of forthcoming productions, and most importantly the names of those in the cast, including the women (who are often not written into history).

Playbills for performance of Lyster’s Royal Italian and English Opera at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide, on Vice-Regal Command Nights, Tuesday 13 October 1879 and Saturday 25 October 1879. Left: Theatre Royal, Adelaide. Un Ballo in Maschera, letterpress on silk, gold fringe, MS8827/11/1026, and Right: Theatre Royal, Adelaide. Fra Diavolo, letterpress on silk, gold fringe, MS8827/11/102

The playbills were arranged in chronological order (within country of origin) by Library staff when they were originally organised after the Collection donation was completed in 1969–1972. This order reveals the movements of the itinerant theatre troupes in England; we see their journeys dotting around the country, playing in various towns, not staying longer than about a month at a time before moving to the next town. The Australian playbills point to a more stable existence brought about by the wealth created through theatre ownership and management, rather than just acting.

Silk playbills for performances at the Argo Theatre, (on board the ship Argo) from a scrapbook containing miscellaneous text and images, including hand-drawn and silk playbills

MS 8827 BOX 122.⁴

What becomes apparent is that the order of the playbills is in itself a source of information on which evidence-based narratives of past events and lifestyles could be based; the playbills are primary documents which enable historians to place particular people in particular places, and at a particular time, and as such, they are invaluable research sources. We see the broad repertoire of the troupes, revealing clues about the evolving tastes of audiences over more than a century. Productions of Shakespeare plays practically disappear after the mid-1850s and we see the rise of melodrama and the high-action stage spectacular. And given the era, we also see derogatory racial and gender characterisation.

Programs

Theatre programs for Bland Holt productions, 1901, MS 8827 BOX 93

This series contains approximately 109 theatre programs dating from 1887 to 1936, relating to productions by Bland Holt, and other theatre companies, including some international companies. There are also some theatre programs pasted into the numerous scrapbooks in the Collection.

Posters and billboards

Drury Lane Pantomime “Sindbad”, lithograph on paper, 76.2 x 50.9 cm, MS8827/11/1254

There are eight posters in the Collection, most come from the Bland Holt component of the archive and are monochrome chalk lithographs. Two exceptions are for productions of the pantomime Sindbad. They are beautiful colour lithographs by John Hassell, advertising the London Drury Lane production of Sindbad, a pantomime by J. Hickory Wood and Arthur Collins.

Of the eight multi-sheet billboards in the collection, dating from 1873–1908, I will highlight and discuss two: ‘Pleasure’ with Harry Nicholls,and Little Jim. All the billboards have been digitised and will be made available online via the catalogue in due course.

‘Pleasure’ with Harry Nicholls, lithograph, 1887, MS8827/12/7

‘Pleasure’ with Harry Nicholls, a multi-sheet advertising billboard, is made up of 15 lithographed sheets printed by the Strand Publishing Company and measures almost 2 x 8 metres. It is not dated in the image, nor titled; the title in the Library’s catalogue was derived from information on the original wrapping paper in which the loose sheets that make up the whole were stored. Harry Nicholls is depicted on the extreme left and again behind the carriage. The artist/lithographer was I. J. Linzell, and other examples, dated 1885, of theatre posters by them are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The play Pleasurewas written by Paul Merritt and Augustus Harris, and performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, starring Harry Nicholls.⁵

Little Jim, c.1908

MS8827/12/1

Bland Holt in Flint and Steel, c.1873-c.1876

MS8827/12/3.⁶

The billboard Little Jim is one of two for this play. Made up of three colour lithographed sheets adhered together, it measures 211.5 x 97.6 cm. The play is a stage adaptation by Arthur Shirley (1853–1925) and Ben Landeck (1864–1928) of Le Petit Muet [The little mute] by Henri Kerouel. Shirley and Landeck are known to have collaborated from 1908–1928, though this play was performed in London as early as 1902. The printing firm, James Walker & Co., Dublin, later produced many WWI posters.⁷

There are also 4 billboards for the play Flint and Steel, which date from 1873 to 1876, two are three sheeters, and the other two are 6-sheet billboards. At the time of writing, I was unable to find any information about this play, so dating the billboards was a challenge. The billboards were printed by the National Print and Engraving Co. Chicago (USA), which is known to have operated from at least 1870 to 1920 and given the stylistic elements of the chalk lithography, they can be placed in the 1870s. While two of them are titled simply Flint and Steel, the other two are titled Bland Holt in Flint and Steel, suggesting they date from 1873–1876 when Holt was in America.

Illuminated addresses

[Illuminated address] To George Selth Coppin, Esq. J.P., 1877, 7 watercolours, 1 albumen silver photograph hand-coloured, gouache, gold and coloured inks laid down on buff board

Pictures Collection, H31478⁸

There are nine illuminated addresses presented to George Coppin, five in the Pictures Collection and four in the Manuscripts Collection; all are gifts of Lucy Coppin in 1953 and 1958. A fine example was presented to George Selth Coppin in recognition of his services as a Member of the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly from a group of gentlemen including Henry McGuigan, Chairman, Louis L. Smith, Vice-Chairman, and John Anderson, Treasurer. Illuminated by Hamel & Ferguson, it consists of photographs, lithography, a number of watercolours, and gold and coloured inks.

Photographs

A rare double daguerreotype of Blanche and Amy Coppin; and portrait of Lucy Coppin with Constance, MS8827/13/PHO9

The collection of photography in the Coppin Collection is fully digitised (though at the time of writing, not all digitised images have yet been linked to their catalogue records). It consists of close to one thousand photographs (many contained in albums) and includes early format photographs, family photographs, portraits of actors, and views of stage productions and scenery design.

Among the early format photographs, there are ten fine examples of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes depicting members of the Coppin family dating from circa 1850 to 1860, and a number of glass plate negatives from around 1900 to 1905, some showing Coppin at home.

Bland Holt and Florence Holt at home, hand coloured, unknown photographer, c.1930

MS8827/13/PHO286

Bland Holt with chickens, by Pegg Clarke, c.1930

MS8827/13/PHO128

The large collection of photographs, in albums or loose, of the Coppin family and the Bland Holt family date from the 1870s to the 1930s. Most are studio portraits, but some are less formal, showing the families in their Melbourne (Richmond and Kew) and seaside (Sorrento) homes.

Portrait of Harry Nash, in Album of portraits, 1886

MS8827/13/PHO54

Hand coloured studio portrait of Emily Duncan, c.1875

MS8827/13/PHO371

A substantial collection of studio portraits of actors and other theatre personalities—both Australian and international—appear in numerous albums and in loose form. There are also several albums dating from the late 19th century, produced in England, that depict stage and scenery designs. These were used as guides for designing productions in Australia. Theatre productions included: A Run of Luck, The Best of Friends, The Great Millionaire, The White Heather, A Life of Pleasure, The Prodigal Son, The White Cat, The Great Rescue, Sporting Life, Going the Pace, Never Despair, The Ruling Passion, Mankind, and scenes from the 1920 film The Breaking of the Drought.⁹

Two examples from a series of hand-coloured photographs in oval mounts, of George Coppin in the roles of Jem Bags the Wandering Minstrel (MS8827/13/PHO86), and Putzi the maire of Nevers (MS8827/13/PHO79) 

The Coppin Portfolio, containing 6 albumen sliver photographs of George Coppin in his signature roles, by Edmund Cosworth Waddington & Co, and one playbill, Manuscripts Collection, MS8827/13/PHO6410

Playscripts

A collection of over 900 published playscripts used by the theatre companies of George Coppin and Bland Holt dating from c.1849 to c.1917. The handwritten annotations make these fascinating examples of the playscript as a working tool of theatre companies. Most of these playscripts bare the imprint of either Lacy’s Acting Edition of Plays, published in London by the playwright and publisher Thomas Hailes Lacy (or T.H. Lacy, 1809–1873), or French’s American Drama, published in New York by Samuel French (1821–1898). The plays were published over many years and were the central resource for 19th century theatrical productions. There are also a number of what appear to be unpublished handwritten and typescript playscripts dating from 1879 to 1927.

Music

Music folios for instrumental parts for the production of A Path of Thorns, MS 8827 BOX 28 and BOX 69¹¹

The music component is extensive and impressive in its scope. There are instrumental parts and songs for over 30 theatrical productions, dating from 1873–1910, most containing between 10 and 13 folios of music for the various instruments. The folios are personalised with handwritten notes. The music component also contains examples of lyrics, songbooks, loose sheet music and voice training exercises.

An outstanding example is the music for A Path of Thorns. Consisting of 10 folios, each cover has been decorated with ornate instrument-themed designs, some with gold highlights and others signed by the artist.

Costume and scenery designs

Album of costume drawings of Kings and Queens of England, circa 1880-circa 1900. Contains watercolour drawings annotated with grey lead pencil, includes some fabric swatches. MS 8827 BOX 64.¹²

There are 13 scrapbooks which contain inspiration and source material for costume and scenery design. These volumes include pen and ink drawings, watercolours, original photographs, press clippings, fabric swatches, often thematically arranged and collaged onto pages. They date from 1880 to 1909 and were used by costume and set designers working in Bland Holt’s company.

Subject matter includes various national dress and racial ‘types’, royalty, military, aristocratic fashions, comic dress and sporting dress. Some volumes also contain portraits of actors and stage personalities. Source material for scenery includes depictions of countries and cities, streetscape, country views, carriages, animals and weaponry.

Design for theatre curtains and drop curtains, by Philip W. Goatcher, c.1890-1900, Pictures Collection, H31477

The Collection also includes extraordinary examples of the original artwork for set designs. An exquisite example, gifted to the Library by Lucy Coppin in 1958, is the watercolour and gouache piece Design for theatre curtains and drop curtains, by Philip W. Goatcher.

In recent years more examples of set designs were found (wrapped in brown paper parcels), when the Coppin Collection as a whole was being catalogued and rehoused. An almost forgotten resource, they include a substantial number of set designs for various acts of the play The Breaking of the Drought, and a few for The Cotton King. They have now been cleaned and treated by the Library’s Conservation team, who have documented their research and processes in a fascinating Library blog.¹³

Provenance

The Coppin Collection extends across the Library’s Pictures and Manuscripts Collections. The acquisition of it as a named collection was formally recorded in the Manuscripts Accession Register in 1969 (with further material added in 1970) and was given the accession number MS 8827, which identifies it to this day. A donation by the Estate of the late E.D.A. Bagot (1893–1968), George Coppin’s biographer, it came via the National Library of Australia¹⁴ where Bagot had deposited it after finishing his book, and consisted of numerous bundles, folders and boxes of Bagot’s research notes, book manuscript and transcripts, as well as primary source material given to him by Lucy Coppin (Coppin’s last surviving daughter) which included Coppin’s diaries for 1864, 1865 and 1886, volumes of correspondence dating from 1845 to 1880, scrapbooks, playbills and newspaper clippings, biographical information, and the research notes of John McEwan, an historian who had done extensive research on Coppin and was supported by Daisie Young (nee Coppin) the youngest Coppin daughter.

Further research into the provenance of the Coppin Collection at the State Library though, reveals that the Library had a long standing relationship with the Coppin family which predates the donation that came from Bagot. As early as 1932 the Library acquired from Daisie Coppin, a collection of 84 theatrical playbills issued 1846–1847 in South Australia and Port Phillip District,¹⁵ and in 1953 we see a donation of nearly 300 items from Lucy Coppin.¹⁶

The Coppin material was identified as historically significant in 1950 by art historian Agnes Paton Bell¹⁷ who arranged for notable academics and librarians from the University of Melbourne and the State Library Victoria to visit and assess the material with a view to acquiring it for preservation. Members of the Coppin family were conscious of the importance of finding a suitable institution to house the collection for the benefit of researchers and to contribute to the wider story of the growth and development of Victoria. Interest in Australian history was growing in the 1950s, and with the fervour that accompanied the knowledge of the planned building of the La Trobe Library to house and grow the Australiana material of the SLV, donations of primary source historical material increased greatly.

It was during this waive of enthusiasm to build the State Collection that we see in 1953 the incredible donation of Coppin material by his daughter Lucy Coppin mentioned above. The donation included a collection of masks painted by Sam Wills, used by Bland Holt in recitals,¹⁸ numerous illustrated addresses, invitations, photographic portraits of actors including many of Bland Holt and Coppin in his signature rolls, albums of photographs of set designs for plays from Drury Lane, collections of playbills, books of costume design, words and music of songs, legal documents and financial documents, volumes of newspaper cuttings, and correspondence. This material was accessioned into the Historical Register (with the accession prefix ‘H’ preceding a running number) which, as well as being the register for most non-book material, was the formal Pictures Accession Register.  Much of this material was eventually transferred to the portion of the Coppin Collection that is now in the care of the Library’s Manuscripts Collection. A few years later Lucy Coppin donated further significant items: in 1958 the grand Coppin clock which stood in the Queen’s Hall until 2002;¹⁹ in 1959 the White marble clock belonging to George Coppin, dated 1880;²⁰ and in 1960 she bequeathed the Shakespeare window.²¹

The foundation stone of the La Trobe Library was laid in 1951 and it was not until 14 years later that it was officially opened in 1965.²² Without a building to house these new acquisitions, collection items were wrapped in paper and stored in the basements of the various Library buildings, awaiting the completion of the new building on La Trobe Street. It was these packages that are referred to in accounts of the development of the Library’s Pictures and Manuscript collections. Former Pictures Librarian Christine Downer writes:

Patricia Reynolds, the first La Trobe Librarian recounted in a recent interview that shortly after joining the Library staff in 1952, she discovered numbers of brown paper parcels, tied up with string and filled with photographs, in cupboards in the Palmer Hall. The excitement of this discovery was such that she forgot to go to lunch that day.²³

Regarding the Manuscripts Collection, historian John Thompson writes:

In 1956 the Library appointed its first Manuscripts Librarian (though not yet a full-time position) and at last a start could be made in bringing the scattered holdings together to form a separate collection. Recalling her first experiences working with the manuscripts collections, Clarice Kemp has told me that material was held in no more than 121 or so boxes and that manuscripts were held in as many as thirteen separate locations around the main Library building.²⁴

Registration of manuscript material began in earnest in 1958, and as the Coppin Collection emerged from the various storage places around the Library, and the final portions of it returned from the NLA by 1974, we start to see a formal, logical arrangement into 15 Series (which have remained relevant and proven to be very useful in the listing and digitising efforts of recent years).²⁵ We also see some back and forth transferring of material from the Pictures Collection to the Manuscripts Collection and vice versa. The Accession Registers of the time are dotted with annotations about these various moves which is in itself an extraordinary documentation of the management of archives and artifacts by a large collecting institution.

As concluding remarks, it is worth recording the names of staff and volunteers who have worked to organise, shape and log the vast Coppin Collection since the 1950s. Library staff include Joan Maslen (former Librarian and theatre specialist), Shona Dewer (Librarian, Manuscripts), Frances Thiele (former Field Historian and music expert, Manuscripts), Elizabeth Payne (Senior Librarian, Description Original Materials) and the volunteers who have lent their expertise and labour over the years: Ruth Bryce, Mimi Colligan, Elisabeth Kumm and Anne Glover. It is a great source of pride for me that I was involved in the cataloguing and digitising of the photographs and playbills in the Collection, and in the final concentrated push over the last few years to bring together the efforts of my colleagues to create a complete Finding Aid which will serve researchers for many years to come.

Endnotes

1. Alec Bagot, Coppin the Great: Father of the Australian theatre, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1965

2. The Finding aid is available via this link, or via the catalogue record: https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/resources/256

3. The entire collection of playbills in the Coppin Collection have been digitised and are available to view online.

4. Finding aid link: https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/archival_objects/166550

5. Harry Nicholls was known to have performed in A Life of Pleasure at the Theatre Royal, Dury Lane in 1893. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Nicholls_(comedian). A citation in the catalogue of the National Library of New Zealand states: Bland Holt in ‘A life of pleasure’, by Sir Augustus Harris. With Mrs Bland Holt and Miss Elizabeth Watson from London. Opera House Wellington. 25 November 1895.https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22415638, (Viewed 20 November 2023); There are two small playbills in the SLV’s collection for the production of Pleasure by Paul Merritt and Augustus Harris at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. Details of cast vary on each bill. Bland Holt is not in the production. As with the billboard, these are printed by the Strand Publishing Company too. (Accession number: MS8827/11/1249)

6. Finding Aid link: https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/archival_objects/161900

7. www.arthurlloyd.co.uk (Viewed 2 May 2021)

8. Catalogue link: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/253094

9. The photographs relating to the film The Breaking of the Drought are discussed in the SLV blog, The Breaking of the Drought: Silent movies and photography. https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/such-was-life/the-breaking-of-the-drought-silent-movies-and-photography/

10. The whole Portfolio can be viewed online: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/382866

11. Finding Aid link: https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/archival_objects/165347

12. Finding Aid link: https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/archival_objects/161891

13. Melodrama in Miniature—the conservation treatment of model set pieces from the 1902 play ‘The Breaking of the Drought’: https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/our-stories/collection-care/melodrama-in-miniature/

14. The National Library of Australia passed the collection on to the State Library of Victoria according to the wishes of Mrs Bagot after the death of her husband. The National Library made copies for its collection.

15. These were accessioned in the Pictures (Historical) Register at H3063–H3146.

16. These are listed in the Pictures (Historical) Register at H16579–H16688.

17. Agnes Paton Bell, How the George Coppin and Bland Holt material was discovered, 1967, Australian Manuscripts Collection, SLV, MS 8240.

18. These are in the Pictures Collection, H15973/1–16 and H15974/1–43, and are fully catalogued and digitised so can be viewed online via the SLV catalogue. They are in copyright, so reproduction here was not possible in time for publication.

19. Now conserved and on display in the Foundation Members Lounge, off the Dome (La Trobe Reading Room).

20. Pictures Collection, H18183. In storage LTRE 551.

21. The Shakespear window is installed for exhibition on Level 6 of the Dome (La Trobe Reading Room) at the Library. For discussion and history of this donation, see Mimi Colligan, “‘That window has a history’: The Shakespeare Window at the State Library,” La Trobe Journal, No.78, Spring 2006, pp. 94-103.

22. See the State Library Victoria, Research Guide: https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/slvhistory

23. Christine Downer, “Pictures In Victoria - Images As Records In The La Trobe Library Picture Collection”, La Trobe Journal, No. 50, Spring 1992, p.13; available online: https://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-50/t1-g-t2.html

24. John Thompson, “The Australian Manuscripts Collection in the State Library of Victoria: Its Growth, Development and Future Prospects”, La Trobe Journal, No. 21, April 1978, p.12; available online: https://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-21/t1-g-t2.html

25. The new Finding Aid is available via the catalogue record for the Coppin Collection, or directly:  https://findingaids.slv.vic.gov.au/repositories/3/resources/256

Niagara Falls. From Guide to Niagara Falls and Its Scenery, George W. Childs, Philadelphia, 1865. Internet Archive.

JULY 1865

On a windy afternoon in mid-summer, George Coppin stood and waited for a man to walk over Niagara Falls.

The man was a tightrope walker named Harry Leslie.¹ ‘America’s Blondin’, the press called him, a nod to the famous Frenchman who had traversed Niagara Gorge in June 1859.² Monsieur Charles Blondin worked without a net and made his famous crossing on a light rope, not even an inch thick. Mr Leslie’s cheer squad promised his ‘ascension’ on Tuesday 18 July 1865, below Niagara’s Suspension Bridge, would exceed that miracle and unfold ‘in a manner not equalled’ by any other acrobat, foreign born or American.³

Coppin read all about it in the New York Clipperas his train from Buffalo pulled into the resort town of Niagara on the border between the United States and Canada. He was well acquainted with rope dancers—or funambulists as they were sometimes called. Ten years earlier, at his Olympic Theatre in Melbourne, he had presented a wire-walker named Monsieur Lalanne to considerable acclaim. The ‘physical intrepidity’ of one Madame Della Casse had impressed visitors to Cremorne Gardens as well but their agile antics paled against the daredevilry of high wire artistes who made the great outdoors their stage.⁴ No stage anywhere was better known for perilous feats than Niagara. And in the dying days of the Rebellion, no American funambulist was more acclaimed for his aerial artistry than Leslie.⁵

An April edition of the Clipper described his ‘daring rope ascension … across one of the public streets of Buffalo’ and informed readers that ‘Mr Leslie intends to make a number of excursions across the Niagara River during the coming summer’.⁶ The first of those excursions was on 15 June when he walked a tightrope across Niagara’s Whirlpool Rapids and performed ‘a variety of difficult feats … over the chasm’.⁷ At his second ‘ascension’, on the Fourth of July, Leslie took pleasure in ‘enacting a drunken scene, staggering, reeling etc., with a perfect recklessness of life or limb’, all the while wielding a 20-foot-long balancing-pole.⁸

Blondin casually reads a newspaper as the waters of Niagara swirl below. Stereoscopic view of Blondin’s 1859 Rope Ascension over Niagara River. Courtesy of Mark St Leon.

Coppin’s arrival in Niagara, on Monday 17 July, coincided with Leslie’s third scheduled ascension. ‘The wind was blowing very strong at the time’, he observed, and hanging onto his hat, he wondered how the acrobat could possibly avoid being blown into the ‘seething waters beneath’.⁹ Leslie not only appeared as advertised; he doubled down on the danger. Arriving in the late afternoon with wife and baby, he astonished onlookers by shackling his hands and feet to heavy iron chains. An ‘immense concourse of people’ had gathered in the soaking air to witness this do-or-die event and as Leslie started out, swaying in a ‘severe gale’, everyone held their breath, Coppin included.¹⁰ ‘I felt quite sick when I saw him upon the little rope so high above the foaming waters’, he confessed. ‘An extra puff [of wind] might have caused him to lose his balance and there was nothing but certain death for him’.¹¹

Leslie survived his dice with death. Although ‘compelled to move cautiously’, he ‘made his march back and forth in a manner... not equalled by Blondin’ and was ‘hailed with the most enthusiastic applause’ at ‘both ends of his cord’.¹² A relieved Coppin marked the moment in his journal:

Saw Leslie walk across [Niagara] on a rope.¹³

Once was enough. Informed that ‘he [Leslie] is going to cross again on the 3rd of August’, he thought ‘I should not like to see him again’.¹⁴ In any case, there was so much else for Coppin to take in at Niagara. This was America’s most visited natural wonder and lodging in a ‘small country inn’ on the American side, in the company of Mr Everett and Mr Cathcart, he was well placed to enjoy the Horseshoe Falls and adjacent attractions such as Table Rock, the Devil’s Hole and the Cave of the Winds.¹⁵ The latest Guide to Niagara Falls carried ‘stereoscopic’ pictures of these fabled sites and enclosing the booklet in a parcel addressed to Melbourne, he assured his children they were ‘very like the places they represent’. When it came to describing the colossal scale of the falls, the roar of its thunder, the marvel of its mists, words—almost—failed him.¹⁶ ‘A wonderful sight’ was the most he could manage.¹⁷

George Coppin, 1865, photographed by C.D. Fredricks & Co., New York

From Album of American military portraits, presidents and performers, 1865, George Selth Coppin, Papers 1814-1965

Harry Leslie, 1865, photographed by C.D. Fredricks & Co., New York

From Album of American military portraits, presidents and performers, 1865, George Selth Coppin, Papers 1814-1965

With Mr and Mrs Kean staying in a large hotel at British Niagara on the Canadian side, Coppin was free to roam and he savoured every moment. One day, he enjoyed a ‘splendid rapid bath’ where the warm ‘sulphuretted [sic]’ water gushed with ‘great force’.¹⁸ Another time he strolled around Goat Island where the ‘swift flood glides like molten silver’ and bought ‘four little reticules [bags] ornamented with beadwork made by the Indian women’.¹⁹ ‘I only saw Mr Kean once during the whole time’, he wrote home. ‘Altogether, it was one of the most comfortable weeks I have enjoyed since I left Australia’.²⁰

Niagara’s jaw-dropping diversions hardly eased Coppin’s ’distress’ at not ‘receiving one word’ from his wife in two months. He knew there had been a delay in Australian mail reaching England and therefore America ‘but I have not heard any reason why [it] is missing as I see very few English papers and the papers in this country know and care so little about Australia that they would not publish any account of the accident’.²¹ Coppin had no way of knowing either how his missives to the Melbourne Herald were being received. ‘I wonder what the people [in Australia] really think of them’, he mused. ‘If they are considered good and serviceable to the colony, they will be of advantage to me when I return. If not, I shall be laughed at’. Waiting on an answer, he decided to ‘send another letter’ to editor Somerton.²² There was much news to relate; most dramatically, the capture of fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the execution of Mary Surratt, one of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators. He detected ‘a great feeling of indignation against the President [Johnson] for hanging the woman’.²³ But putting pen to paper, he chose to ‘say very little on things political’ and focus on ‘things in general’... such as trains.²⁴

Coppin had found ‘the railroads throughout [America] very much better than expected’ and remarked on how ‘the country here is [being] opened up by cheap railways’. ‘The trouble is the expense of getting produce to a population for consumption. They give you the land cheap but take it out of you for freight’. Tree planting was another admirable American initiative. It was ‘universally adopted in all the cities I have visited’, he wrote, and while ‘our trees [in the colonies] are not old enough to convey the least idea of the comfort they will give when their branches extend sufficiently to shade pedestrians, the sooner municipalities [in Melbourne] imitate the very excellent example here, the more beautiful and inviting each locality will become’.

Coppin judged Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo and other places ‘upon the lake’ to be the ‘most charming’ in the way of trees but the most ‘go-ahead city after New York’? That would be Chicago. ‘Twenty five years ago, the inhabitants did not number 5,000’, he wrote, quoting facts and figures from his guide book. ‘Now it can show a population of 200,000 with the finest streets, opera house, theatre, museum, hotels, public buildings, wharves, warehouses and promenades in the country – it appears very wonderful to me’.

Buffalo was booming.

Fronting the shores of Lake Erie, with Canada on the other side, it had become a vital inland American port but appearing at the city’s Metropolitan Theatre, for a manager named McKee, the touring party encountered audiences of consistent coldness.²⁵ ‘They neither applaud nor laugh at a joke’, Mr Kean complained after their debut in The Jealous Wife.²⁶ Worse was the apparent lack of comprehension. ‘No where out of New York [City] where we have acted do they understand such lines as I say as Louis XIth... I do not believe they know what “Dauphin” means’.²⁷ On the other side of the curtain, the tourists encountered apathy and profanity. In London, offending actors were fined for swearing. In brawling Buffalo, there was no stopping the backstage blasphemies. ‘You should hear the women swear behind the scenes of the theatres!!!’, Mrs Kean huffed.²⁸ Her ears continued to be assaulted when she left the stage door:

It is really awful to walk in streets here and listen to the swearing of the little little children. The mildest term they use to each other is d...d fool.²⁹

Health problems persisted. Overworked and low on energy, the Keans were ill more often than not and resorted to remedies both conventional and naturopathic.³⁰ Fortunately, the notices in Buffalo were positive and their four performances generated ‘fine business’.³¹ It was the same story in Rochester, on Lake Ontario, where they played one-night. Now, as the tour bent towards Montreal, a second—briefer—break at Niagara beckoned.³²

Harry Leslie, ‘the American Hero of Niagara’, 1865, engraving by Clay, Cosack & Co. From sheet music for the ‘Leslie Polka’, dedicated to him by J.E. Hartel.

Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University

AUGUST 1865

The very idea was preposterous, but it was there in black and white: for his fourth and final Niagara Falls ascension, on Thursday 3 August, Harry Leslie had announced he would ‘carry a cooking stove … cook his dinner and eat it on the rope’.³³

Coppin, who had returned to his inn by the falls, was intrigued. Unable to resist watching another crossing, he joined a huge throng on the American side where Leslie appeared in a dress of silver cloth trimmed with gold. The crinkly haired acrobat made his first traverse of the gorge ‘on a run’ in four minutes flat. Returning to the centre of the rope, he pulled some risky gymnastic moves but cooking utensils were not part of this act.³² Nor the one that followed. Leslie had decided instead to insert his feet into two peach baskets and clomp across the roiling waters. On the return, he held a pail of water in each hand, put another on his head, and strapped a balancing-pole to his neck. ‘This is a feat never before attempted’, the Clipperdeclared... and it almost came unstuck.³⁴

Watching from his perch high over towering walls of water, Coppin saw Leslie confidently set out and then—suddenly—drop one of his pails:

This destroyed his balance, and compelled him to drop the other pail. In doing this he slipped or fell from the rope, upon which he caught by one leg. Leslie succeeded in catching the rope with his left hand, regained his equilibrium and the control of his pole, and reached the American shore in safety.³⁵

Endnotes

1. Harry Leslie (1837–1883) formed a travelling minstrel company in the late 1850s and impressed audiences with his clowning and acrobatic antics. His first tightrope walk was at New York’s Bowery Theatre in 1860–1861. The four Niagara Falls ‘ascensions’ Leslie made in the summer of 1865 earned him national attention, but the fame was fleeting. By 1870, he was playing pantomime roles. A decade later, in a fit of ‘mania’, he was arrested for stabbing a policeman. Leslie died alone in Brooklyn, unknown and poverty stricken.

2. Charles Blondin (1824–1897) was born Jean Francois Gravelet and performed his first rope dance at the age of four. Arriving in America in 1855, intending to join an equestrian troupe, he was seized by the idea of crossing Niagara and did so in front of 25,000 people on 30 June 1859. The Great Blondin, as he was billed, shocked the crowd by sitting down on his cable above the gorge and calling for the Maid of the Mist tourist vessel to anchor momentarily beneath him. He cast a line down, hauled up a bottle of wine, and drank it before ‘breaking into a run’; towards the Canadian side. Blondin went on to cross Niagara dozens of times, on one occasion carrying a stove, on another bearing his son on his back. He gave his final performance in 1896.

3. Clipper, 29 Jul 1865.

4. Argus, 16 Aug 1856; Age, 25 Nov 1856; Age, 25 May 1929.

5. Rope dancers were in demand at the close of the civil war. In July 1865, John Denier gave a ‘rope ascension’ over Little Falls, New York State while ‘tight rope artiste’ Marietta Ravel promised ‘thrilling feats in mid air’. Clipper, 15 & 29 Jul 1865.

6. Clipper, 8 Apr 1865.

7. Clipper, 24 Jun 1865. ‘Harry Leslie... did it in a storm which would have deterred any man of ordinary nerve’.

8. Clipper, 15 Jul 1865.

9. George Coppin to Lucy Coppin, Buffalo, 23 Jul 1865; SLV.

10. Clipper, 24 Jun 1865.

11. George Coppin to Lucy Coppin, Buffalo, 23 Jul 1865; SLV.

12. Clipper, 29 Jul 1865.

13. George Coppin journal, 18 Jul 1865; SLV.

14. George Coppin to LC, Buffalo, 23 Jul 1865; SLV.

15. George Coppin journal, 1 Aug 1865; SLV. ‘The Nestor Hotel … very comfortable, the family attend to the business’.

16. Geoprge Coppin to Lucy Coppin, Buffalo, 23 Jul 1865; SLV.

17. George Coppin journal, 18 Jul 1865; SLV. Visiting Niagara in 1842, Charles Dickens marvelled at the way the ‘waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long’. Fellow English author Anthony Trollope gave an account of his travels through the United States in North America (1862) and thought ‘of all the sights... I am inclined to give the palm to the Falls of Niagara’.

18. George Coppin journal, 21 Jul 1865; SLV.

19. George Coppin to Lucy Coppin, Buffalo, 23 Jul 1865; SLV.

20. ibid.

21. ibid.

22. ibid.

23. George Coppin to Lucy Coppin, Chicago, 9 Jul 1865; SLV.

24. Herald, 21 Oct 1865.

25. Buffalo owed its emergence as a commercial hub to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825.

26. Charles Kean to Mary Kean, Buffalo, 27 Jul 1865; Ripley. The Buffalo Courier declared that the visitors had a right to be proud of the engagement because ‘Buffalo is not unnecessarily enthusiastic’.

27. ibid.

28. Ellen Kean to Mary Kean, New Orleans, 18 Jan 1866; Ripley.

29. Ellen Kean to Mary Kean, Pittsburgh, 30 May 1865; Ripley.

30. Mr Kean sought medical attention for a persistent rash while Mrs Kean had a ‘furious attack of bile’. Ellen Kean to Mary Kean, British Niagara, 23 Jul 1865.

31. Strahan, 156. The BuffaloCourier (25 Jul 1865) thought Mr Kean’s Wolsey in Henry VIII was ‘rendered in a manner quite at variance with the style of those who practice vocal gymnastics on stage’. Ibid., 155.

32. Coppin was in Rochester 30–31 Jul 1865. He started for Niagara on 1 Aug 1865 and stayed for three days. ‘Went up to the Falls again—had a good look round’. George Coppin journal, 3 Aug 1865; SLV.

33. Clipper, 29 Jul 1865.

34. Clipper, 19 Aug 1865.

35. ibid. ‘Saw Leslie walk the rope again in the afternoon and evening’. George Coppin journal, 3 Aug 1865; SLV.

Note on Sources

George Coppin’s correspondence from America divides into letters, journals, diaries and documents. All are held in the Coppin Collection at State Library Victoria, 1814-1965.

Mr and Mrs Kean’s correspondence from Australia and America is shared between three major institutions. Letters about the Australian leg of their journey are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. The Pacific phase of the tour is recounted in letters in the Performing Arts Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas, Austin, Texas. A further cache of letters, relating mostly to travel in the Eastern States, is at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC.

The letters cited above, from Charles and Ellen Kean to their daughter Mary in England, are reproduced in part in:

Ripley, John. ‘”We Are Not in Little England Now”: Charles and Ellen Kean in civil-war America’, Theatre Notebook, Vol. 61, No. 2, 2007.

Strahan, Richard Denman, The American Theatrical Tours of Charles Kean,University of Florida, [Gainesville, Florida], 1984.